What's new

• Within reach: Adventure sits bottom-right, under your thumb, and your Hero and Bag buttons sit bottom-left with chat beside them. Everything else in town is one tap away in the Menu.
• Places: the new Places button in the top bar lists every building in groups. Tap one to open it.
• On a controller: X opens Places, and the cursor starts on Adventure.

• Face the way you walk: every hero now turns to face the camera when walking down the screen and shows their back when walking up, instead of side-stepping everywhere. Armour, cloaks, helms, hair, horns and the rest come with them, drawn for that side of the hero.
• Your party too: the heroes strolling Hearthold walk toward and away from you the same way.
• Fights stay in profile: attacks, casts and hits keep the side view, and a hero turns back to it the moment the action starts. Aiming with the mouse or facing a foe wins: back away from a foe below you and your hero faces it, not the camera.

• The road, not the rope: after the Tavern hire, the town's call to action is Out the North Gate. You walk into the Bramblewold, relight the old wayshrine, and take Bramble Hollow through its own thorn-choked door, the way the story meant it. Compendium
• Doors stay shut until earned: a wall of thorns, a rockfall, a goblin barricade. Each door and pass in the wilds tells you what opens it and where, and your first clear happens because you cleared the way to it.
• One step at a time: the town's objective now reads the road's own next step, and the arrow points the way: the gate, then the wayshrine, then the Hollow.

Fixes

• A fresh hardcore hero no longer inherits the last hero's difficulty, so a softcore Legendary can't open a new hardcore run at Legendary. A hardcore hero starts at Hard.
• Splitting Arrows and your other shot powers fire through a bow's special arrows again: a piercing shot still bursts into shards on the first foe it strikes.
• A hold-the-ward defence can always finish: the keeper and every wave now take ground you can actually reach, so no foe can hole up behind a wall and stall the quest.
• Travelling between places no longer flashes Hearthold on the way through. A door in the wilds, a den's mouth and Onward now show a travelling card until the next place is ready.
• Vhoruun keeps his wager out of a den: one cave room has no floors to raise the stakes through.
• Leaving a den or a dungeon you found in the wilds brings you back to the wilds, with no offer to slip home instead. The way to Hearthold is a wayshrine or a town portal, the same as anywhere out there.
• On a controller the party scrolls fan now reaches the town portal too: open the fan with the D-pad and press the skill 4 button.
• Hired blades now count on the hard modes: every sellsword in your party gives foes more health on Hard, Epic and Legendary, and on Legendary foes can grow further to meet an over-geared hero. Easy and Medium are unchanged, and Heat floors already counted your crew.
• Legendary now reads the whole of your Power: foes there scale against your legendary and unique powers too, the way the card's number already counts them, instead of only the gear stats it used to see.
• Hearthold's gate in the Bramblewold answers a walk up to it instead of a single hidden cell, so clicking the gate asks to take you home.
• A locked gate that names a hunt that hasn't started yet now says the story's trail will lead you back, instead of sending you at a mark that pays nothing.
• The quest tracker stops saying the same thing twice: when a quest already asks you to clear the dungeon you're in, the ambient goal row steps aside.
• A hero whose Power mows even a Legendary card can now taste the next world: Vhoruun's Effigy offers a preview dial, Heat 0 to 10, that burns campaign dungeons at the level-20 wall the deeper tiers charge, paying more experience, gold and magic find per point while drops stay at the tier's own top.
• The Heat dial reads your strength: the Effigy marks the Heat your Power belongs at on the track, a clean-clear streak can now jump the dial straight there instead of climbing in tens, and a first step into a new Pyre Tier opens at your wall instead of the bare floor.
• Mobs keep moving: melee foes fan out to a side as they close on you instead of queueing nose to tail, and between swings they weave around their foe instead of standing a statue. A pack that wraps hits from more angles, so watch your flanks.
• A foe only flashes white on a hit that matters now (a crit, a kill or a real chunk of its health), so a pack under a hail of small hits no longer whites out into a golden wash. A crowd of elites shares one under-glow instead of stacking into a bloom, and every number and health bar still shows the small hits.
• The Heat card's verdict reads your weaker half now: a hero heavy on armor and light on damage, or the other way round, sees under-geared instead of comfortably ahead, with a word for which side is the gap.
• The Effigy can be talked down: a run that ends in a fall, or a clear that nearly cost you, offers to bank the Heat dial a step on the result screen, the other way round from the clean-streak nudge.
• The class ribbons on the hero picker read at a proper size again: the banner hangs a little past the card so even the longest names, Necromancer and Dread Knight, fit whole instead of shrinking the whole row.
• Past Pyre I the mode you picked back in the campaign is fully retired. It can no longer quietly steer contract hunts, town fights, your pet's talents or the Tyrant's wager, and the dial rules alone. A line under the dial says where that old pick still lives.
• The fighter's Superiority Dice talent finally pays out: every third skill you cast lights it up, and your next skill costs nothing. It used to sit on Charging forever and the free cast never came.
• A necromancer in the wilds or a den raises the area's dead now, a few at a time, instead of raising more necromancers. Wake one near an Ashen lair and leave him standing and he used to breed hundreds of himself in under a minute, the horde that froze the game.
• The camera zoom button now always moves the view in classic 2D. On some window widths the fourth step showed the same frame as the third, and only a town portal round trip revealed the wider view; that wide frame is now what the farthest step gives you every time.

• A pit, not a plaza: the chasm in the square is a compact mouth now. Its fence, its KEEP OUT board and the rope ladder down are all still there, and the fire still breathes below, but the square belongs to the stalls and the folk again.
• The north gate stands open: Hearthold's gate is raised and lit for the way out, an easy first landmark. Stand in the arch and the road beyond is yours, from the Bramblewold on. Compendium
• Cooler embers: the pit's glow and heat are turned down, so the square's lamps and windows read again after dark instead of everything burning orange.

Fixes

• On the world map, an act you know but haven't walked yet showed its lands as bare hatched squares. Now each area draws its real shape dim under the fog, and it fills in the day you set foot in it.
• Pick sparkles on Choose your hero stayed painted when Reduce motion is on: every class you tapped kept a ring of gold dots round its figure.
• The title's one-time invitation to replay the Fall could stick on screen under Reduce motion the same way.

• Out on the road, a real fight: foes in the open world stand at your level, and from Pyre II at the tier's Heat, the same as below. A high hero no longer walks through Act I one shot at a time. Compendium
• Dens rise with you: a den's brood stands at your level too, with its den mother a notch above.
• The road knows its worth: a foe in the wild drops loot for its own level, the same as below, and every area card on the Wayshrines screen shows the Heat and the Power it expects.
• Runes, untangled: Spellbook runes are now Variants, Brand runes are now Sigils, and only the stones you find and socket are still runes.

Fixes

• In co-op, a guest relighting an area's second wayshrine now counts for the party.
• Automatic attacks work again where the old switch promised them: Classic attacks → Automatic under the style cards (Settings or the H card), Attack mode on a controller, or Auto-attack on a touch screen. Picked, your hero swings by itself; off, nothing does.
• Class features on the Hero sheet explain themselves: hover, long-press or stop the controller on one in the Features tab or the Progression table and the tip lists what it actually grants, the same numbers the codex prints.
• Choose your hero shows the whole roster: classes you can't take yet sit in the strip as dimmed tiles marked Locked, with a line about how each is earned. The free pick still only buys the classes it could before.
• The Forge's Socket button is reachable again: the Sockets row on an item card was only showing for gear that already had a socket, so nothing could ever be drilled. Now it sits on every item that can take one.
• The road starts when it should: after the Fall, Out the North Gate is on your journal while you head for Bramble Hollow, not after it. A story step the Deep carried you past now pays its reward and tells its beat instead of passing in silence.

• The road and the Deep: the road out the north gate tells the story; the chasm in the square is still the old way down, Acts I to V, and it never locks. A dungeon cleared either way counts on both.
• The Road West: after Grukk, Tamsin points you west: once his crown is taken, the Watch clears the Bramblewold's pass west to the Ashen Barrows. The Deep is still there for the old way down.
• The road runs west: the Ashen Barrows open: three ash-grey areas, their wayshrines and five doors down to Morvaine's Sanctum. Bell towers to ring, pyres to hold, bone-yards where the dead are raised, and the Gardener, Sir Rattleby, Mother Maggot and Marrowmere out in the open. Compendium
• Both ways, for returning players: the Act I card names the road and the Deep, with a button for each.
• Dens you can enter: step into a brood's lair in the wild for a one-room fight against its den mother and her nest cache. Clear it and the nest pays a rare or better; it fills again within the hour.

Fixes

• A story quest out on the road names its area and act on the Adventure screen's quest strip.
• Town portals draw in the 2.5D view too.
• The portal's name plate in Hearthold no longer sits on top of the townsfolk's.

• The road through Act I, in order: every Act I dungeon stands on the road now, in order. Clear each to open the way on, and every mouth in the wild tells you what it is.
• Grukk fights fair again: grukk's third phase no longer locks up when you come in from the Marches.
• Charts pay what they owe: clearing a high chart tier now pays the survey points of every tier below it you skipped (and pays them back to anyone it owes).
• Loyal stays loyal: a sellsword you dismiss and hire back keeps earning loyalty.

Fixes

• A boss's guard slips after three mechanics go unanswered in a row: one open window, then it holds again.
• A town hotkey opens one window, not two (a run waiting behind your town portal no longer answers Hearthold's keys).
• Right-click stays the game's during a boss's entrance.
• The Roadmap now lists everything shipped since 0.27.0 and only what's being built right now.

• Returning from the Depths?: Act I's open world is in the game: the first time you're back in Hearthold, Bram and Quillon meet you by the north gate and point you down the Lastlight Road, to the Bramblewold, the Dig-Scars and Grukk's Marches. Compendium
• A work in progress, said out loud: the Hearthvale is new ground and still being laid: the rest of the road comes in chunks. The welcome card's Roadmap button shows what's coming next.
• Tell Quillon what you find: rough edges, a road that should open and doesn't, a line that reads wrong: Menu → Tell Quillon goes straight to the people building it.

Fixes

• Grukk's third phase no longer locks up when you come in from the Marches.
• The Roadmap now lists everything shipped since 0.27.0 and only what's being built right now.
• Every Act I dungeon stands on the road now, in order. Clear each to open the way on, and every mouth in the wild tells you what it is.
• Clearing a high chart tier now pays the survey points of every tier below it you skipped (and pays them back to anyone it owes).
• A sellsword you dismiss and hire back keeps earning loyalty.

• The Wayshrines screen: travel from Hearthold's square or any lit wayshrine through a proper screen: act tabs, a card per area with a picture of its land, what you've found there, whether its wayshrine is lit, and the Lastlight Road drawn along the foot.
• A world map: the Hearthvale with the Lastlight Road, every area and dungeon you've found drawn in, locks on the roads you haven't opened, and the wayshrines you've lit a tap away. In town it's under Menu and on the Adventure screen; in a run it's the World tab of the map.
• Thistle, the first mount: a shaggy wold pony, yours after Bramble Hollow: ride her anywhere outdoors (walk a moment out of a fight and you're in the saddle), and any blow you throw from her back lands you on your feet swinging.

Fixes

• The ways out of each area are yours to find now: they shift from session to session and show on the map only once your own eyes have reached them.
• Wayshrines are now ruined arches of the Order, and their ember veil wakes when you relight one. Choose where to go and a portal rises in the arch; tap it to step through in a burst of sparks and walk out of the far wayshrine's portal. Hearthold's own grand wayshrine waits by the square.
• Every line of lore now tells one story: Hearthold on the lid of the first fire, the Lastlight Road and its five Seals. The opening lines, each act's "next" pointer, dungeon blurbs, boss titles and intros, the villagers' chatter and the website's story and compendium pages all agree.
• The class tutorial waits for a quiet moment and never stacks under other cards.

• Out of the north gate: Act I opens up: the Bramblewold, the Dig-Scars and Grukk's Marches are wide areas to cross, with waystones to relight, dungeon doors in the wild, camps and ruins to clear, Emberfall burning a different area every hour, and a map that pins it all. Details Compendium
• Fights that ask something of you: from Act II an elite wears a lock (Stone Skin, Possessed, Cursed or Warded) that only you can open. Nothing swings by itself: hold the attack, and your sellswords support instead of carrying. Details Compendium
• Hits always land: a swing that rolls low grazes instead of missing, a natural 20 crits, and your big moves wind up for a beat you can read. Your class's own dash carries you through blows and cancels a wind-up, and "of Quickstep" gear brings it back sooner. Details Compendium
• Two verbs for every class: one kind of move primes a foe with a keyword, your big move cashes it in for a heavy hit and a little of your resource back. Play your whole kit. Details Compendium
• Ember runes and runewords: 24 runes drop from Soot to Starfire, set into sockets for stats, and in the right order they make one of 12 runewords that each empower a Spellbook page you own. A new loot filter keeps the bag tidy. Details Compendium
• Bosses in rounds: the five act bosses fight in rounds you can learn: adds, a move only you can answer, then a window to burn them down. A strip under the boss bar counts it out. Details Compendium
• Heat as rules, with a score: each Pyre band from II adds a named rule you read on the Effigy, cleared Heat runs are graded Bronze to Platinum for a weekly board, and the Ember Swarm becomes the survivors mode. Details Compendium
• Controls and a sharper look: skills aim at the cursor on a mouse, and the run HUD, the gear screens and the run result wear the town's new lettering and gilt frames. Details

Fixes

• Two talents that gave dodge now protect you outright: Evasive Footwork (Battle Master) gives 15% damage reduction for 4 seconds after a dash, and One with Shadows (Warlock) 15% damage reduction below half health. The Cleric's Hallowed Rhythm rune grants a little less health per rank, in line with the other classes.
• A town portal is yours any time you're out of a fight: open one anywhere, click it to step through to Hearthold and back to pick up where you were, and use a party member's portal too (walking over a portal never takes you). Return to Town is gone from the pause menu. A short guide shows you the portal the first time, and the scroll satchel the first time a scroll lands in it (Portal & scrolls in the pause menu shows them again).
• On a controller the right stick now attacks: push it toward a foe and you swing or shoot that way; A is for doors, loot, wayshrines and portals. In the 2.5D view, hold R3 and push the stick to turn the camera. Settings → Key bindings → Controller can put attack back on A.
• A short guided tutorial shows how your class builds and spends its resource and how to use that against elites and bosses; every skill's tooltip now says whether it builds, spends, primes or pays off.
• A public roadmap: what's being built next, on the website and under What's New.
• On a phone the thumb buttons stand above the pickup cards, so a card sliding in never takes a tap meant for a skill.
• On a phone the town's goal row sits under the top bar, and the purse steps aside while a boss bar is up.
• Dungeon doors in the wild now look like what they are: a cave mouth in a rock outcrop, a sunken crypt stair behind a ruined wall, a timbered mine shaft, a catacomb arch among the graves, and each one shows its name once you have seen it.
• Hearthold's north gate opens on Act I: the Bramblewold, the Dig-Scars and Grukk's Marches, with a quest chain that leads from the square's collapse to Grukk's war camp.
• The road through Act I is a road now: each pass and dungeon door opens as the Watch's work gets done. Follow the tracker and the way forward opens.
• Walking into the north gate (or tapping it) takes you out, the Adventure screen leads with the same road, and a wayshrine by the square takes you to any wayshrine you have lit; the road south brings you home to the gate, and a wayshrine's Hearthold to the square.
• An item's card now opens next to the item you clicked, and Equip is the big button on it.
• The two verbs, the fine print: Rogue finishers need Malice to chain again; a Monk's same move twice in a row strikes softer, and its finisher hits a Pressure Point harder with every blow; Oathmaul no longer weakens your Hammerwheel, and for a few seconds after it the wheel keeps every hammer; a Fighter with a shield and nothing stowed can still swap to land a Draw Strike, each Art costs its own share of Initiative (Flash Cut 1, Blade Carousel 2, Sundering Arc and War Banner 3), and an Opened foe takes the whole Art harder, Flash Cut hardest; a Ranger's held shot at its Quarry refills a third of the quiver; a Barbarian's Reeling payoff hands back more Rage on the way to Peak; Charnel Blast opens a Rotted foe even with no corpses about; and for most classes the foe's opening after a payoff lasts a couple of seconds.
• The five act bosses now ask for a party: a ring you must hold with a second body, a last-light enrage if the fight drags, and a Recommended Power you can read on the door before you go in.
• The wild remembers: leave an area by any road, door, wayshrine or portal and it's as you left it when you return: the map you've uncovered, what's lying on the ground, what you've killed and opened. That holds until the hour turns and the Depths send new packs. Every time you start the game anew, the wild is laid out fresh, like a new game in the old Diablo, but the wayshrines you've lit stay lit.
• Clearer map icons for everything you can find outdoors, and the roads to the next area are marked on the map and signposted in the world.

• The open world and a fight that asks more of youVersion 0.27 of The Ember Depths: Act I's open world, locks on elites, two verbs per class, Ember runes, bosses in rounds and Heat with rules and a score.

• Controllers work on the desktop build — an Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro or Steam Deck pad now drives the game when Steam owns the pad: the glyphs match what you're holding, and the title screen, hero select, town and dungeons all answer to it.
• Quit to desktop — a new button on the hero-select screen and in Settings closes the desktop build cleanly, the same as the window's ✕. (The browser game doesn't need it — just close the tab.)
• Your pad, your glyphs — PlayStation pads hint with ◯△◻✕, Switch pads with their own letters, Steam Deck reads like a Deck — and Steam's controller settings can still remap anything.

Fixes

• Endgame fights no longer snowball: a pull wakes only the pack you engage, packs stop chaining across rooms, and your sellswords wait for your lead before charging a sleeping pack.
• Holding a direction through a boss's intro dialog keeps you walking when it closes, instead of needing a fresh key press.
• Sellsword questline quests now say "Needs <name> in your party" when that sellsword isn't with you, instead of silently not counting.
• Every new hero starts with the whole of The Fall again — the short cold-open start that some new players were given is switched off.
• An echoed spin (Tempest of Palms, Blood Whirl, Whirlwind) no longer leaves its whirl animation looping on the spot after the fight.
• Enemy attacks now speak one colour language: red means step out, blue means interrupt, yellow means break, teal means stand together. A blue cast you ignore now costs you something, and the deadliest blows always give you time to answer.
• The desktop build no longer shows a fullscreen button over hero select or in Settings — the window handles full screen itself (F11 or Alt+Enter, and it remembers).
• The Fall's last sealed tunnel no longer needs the ember shrine — the rubble slides open as you reach it. The shrine is still worth the detour (a full heal and a damage buff), it just can't strand the run anymore.
• Town menus are redrawn crisp: the top bar, quick nav, every building, the Bag, Party, Hero sheet, pet sheet, hero cards, the Effigy, Adventure, Social, Settings, the Codex, the Quest Journal, What's New and your letters get clean gilt frames, sharper lettering, real icons in place of text arrows and "!" marks, tabs down the side, proper level pips, and buildings and portraits at their true size.
• On a phone those menus open straight onto your items, gear, sellswords and pets, under a one-line title bar, and a narrow portrait screen no longer squeezes the Party card's name into a column.
• Item cards got a cleaner look: a weapon leads with its damage per second (and how it compares to what you wear, in green or red), armour with its Armor Class, every stat line has a coloured mark, and powers stand out as their own paragraph.
• Pet portraits are now crisp close-ups of the pets you see in the dungeon, and Ascended pets show off their crown, halo or hat (Harvest Jack wears his vine crown). The pet's skill list on the Party screen no longer runs off the left edge, and its damage reduction no longer reads a hundred times too high.

• The Swarm fights in its own arena — the Effigy Altar now waits at the heart of the floor's biggest room. Touch it and the doors slam shut and the stairs seal: the waves pour inside and the fight stays in the arena until the Swarm ends. Details Compendium
• The altar's bargain is a real choice now — between waves a panel stands up with the effigies' offers, boons and curses laid out with what each pays. Pick one — no more standing by a statue and hoping. Details Compendium
• Nine new bargains — curses that corrode your armour and wards, iron-hardened foes, thinner flasks, slower healing, a wider pour and faltering aim; and boons for the storm-swift, the dodging and the studious. They stack, and each banks more hoard and experience shares. Details Compendium
• The hoard pays experience now too — every pick banks XP shares along with the loot, so the harder you dare the richer the altar's lesson.

• The Ember Swarm: the arena and the altar's bargainThe Effigy Altar's floor is its arena now — the doors seal, the stairs lock, and between waves the altar offers boons and curses that stack into a richer hoard.

• Every boss gets its approach — the last floor of a dungeon now leads to its boss through a long, wide hall into a grand sealed arena, so the way in reads like a boss run instead of another doorway.
• Cave lairs dig a throat — bosses that laired in open caverns now wait at the far end of a tunnel bored toward the heart of the caves: a long walk in, then the fighting ground.
• Bosses fight in rhythms now — each phase's moves play in a set order you can learn, and the act bosses have picked up new tricks: grabs that pin you where dodge won't save you, arenas that turn on you mid-phase, a necromancer's healing rite to interrupt, and desperate last-phase attacks that burn half the room.
• Five new elite affixes — Commander rallies its pack, Soulbound feeds on your kills, Reflective returns a share of each hit while it sheens, Hexfield curses the ground under your feet, and Duelist picks one of you and won't let go.
• The Headless Rider rides harder — the Hallowtide menace now fights like a proper mini-boss: galloping charges, gourd volleys, bats off its saddlebags, and a furious last ride at half health.
• Bait the charge — a boss that slams into a wall mid-charge reels and takes a real beating: standing near cover is finally worth something. And a boss you keep at arm's length stops strolling and runs.
• The Swarm calls more often — an Effigy Altar now waits on about 40% of eligible floors, up from about 35%.

Fixes

• Laptops and desktops with two graphics chips (the usual energy-saving + gaming pair) now prefer the faster one — in the browser and in the desktop app.
• The Effigy Altar that starts the Ember Swarm actually shows itself now — a carved basalt block with banked fire burning in its faces. It used to be completely invisible; you had to bump into an empty tile and trust.

• The Ember Swarm — some floors now hold an Effigy Altar, dungeons and Deep Charts alike. Touch it and the Swarm comes: waves of the floor's monsters pouring in, up to twenty deep. Hold a wave and three effigies rise — stand by one to take its bargain. Boons strengthen the party for the rest of the run; curses make every wave left nastier, and every one you dare fattens the hoard. After waves 5, 10 and 15 a golden effigy offers the way out — take the hoard and walk, or press on for a fatter pay.
• Corrupted Echoes — beat an act's finale boss and on a later visit it can rise twisted: the same moves grown wrong, tougher, angrier, and worth a richer drop. Re-running old ground has teeth again.
• Echo Marks on the board — the Tavern board posts marks on bosses you've already slain. Take one and the corrupted echo is guaranteed to rise on your next descent — the Watch pays extra to see it quiet.

• The Spellbook — at levels 4, 9, 14 and 18 you pick a new page: one skill out of up to 3 offered, on top of your seven core ones. Every page carries runes that change how it plays, unlocking as the skill ranks up, and your class mentor sells the pages you passed over. Details Compendium
• A signature mechanic for every class — all 14 switch one on with their first page: the Fighter's second weapon, the Wizard's reacting elements, the Sorcerer's heat, the Monk's jade beads and more. Before level 4 you play as you always did. Details Compendium
• Hammer storms and the Red Gyre — Paladins build Oathlight and wind spirals of holy hammers around them, then drop one great hammer that spends it all. Barbarians pick the Red Gyre page and steer it through the pack, feeding Rage with every foe it strikes. Compendium
• Kill chains and corpse chains — when a Rogue finisher kills, you leap on to the next foe, a leap for every Malice pip; Night Step, a Rogue page from level 9, is one of the finishers. Necromancers keep every corpse for a few seconds: burst them in a chain through the pack, raise them, spin them round you, or hatch flies from them. Compendium
• Shapes, songs and small print — Druids shift between Caller, Bear and Wolf just by casting. Bards hold songs that pulse to the whole party, Clerics consecrate the floor, Dread Knights wear their Souls as orbiting wisps, and Warlocks cast on credit and owe the difference. Compendium
• Keystones and chase legendaries — every class gets a talent that bends its mechanic and a legendary worth chasing: The Turning Sun, The Tally Knife, The Hundred Funerals, The Eighth Winter, Fang of the Hundredth Night and more. Compendium
• Free respec, free picks — every hero gets one free full respec (talents, Spellbook pages, Brand), found at the Temple. And when you make a hero you may take one locked class and one locked race (not the Deep races) free: look for the Free pick badge.
• New art for everything — a new iron-bound interface on every screen, 24 hero bodies that wear the gear you equip, new creator looks, 53 redrawn bosses, 26 pets that grow through four stages, every townsperson and town animal, a sprite for every weapon, and new spell effects in place of the old circles on the ground; rare to mythic gear now shines as a soft outline in its colour. It's on for everyone; if you miss the old sprites, Settings → Graphics → Classic hero art puts them back. Details

Fixes

• The first time you meet a foe with a Poise bar, Quillon explains how your class breaks it, and what a Break does to the foe. Hold or tap the bar for a reminder any time; the Help guide has a Poise entry too.
• When you clear a campaign dungeon you can head straight on to the next one, or return to Hearthold. On the stairs between floors you can also head back to town.
• On phones the battle screen is compact now: a slim hero card with your sellswords beside it, small globes, a thumb-sized skill arc and a quest chip leave the fight in view, and Quillon speaks in a subtitle strip while you keep moving.
• On phones, menus are bigger and easier to read, toasts no longer cover buttons, and the end of a run always shows its way back to Hearthold.
• The talent tree shows at a glance what you have learned: learned talents wear a gold frame and a check mark, ones you can learn now an ember frame.
• The town chat is a small bubble in the corner: click it to open the chat, click the town (or press Esc) to put it away. It no longer covers the town, and Settings → Display → Chat can hide it altogether.
• The screenshot sent with a Tell Quillon letter now shows building windows (the Cartographer's Lodge, the Smithy and the rest) as they look on your screen, instead of with the town showing through them.
• The Depths fight back from Act II: foes come as warbands with leaders, Champion packs share one power and use it in turns, Swarm Surges pour from burrow cracks you can break, lurkers come through the door behind you, and from Act III every floor holds a Herald whose moves you can learn.
• From Act II, a blow that marks the floor first can't be dodged by luck: step out of it. In return, one blow can no longer take you from full health to nothing.
• The late campaign and the higher Pyre Tiers hit harder and pack their floors denser, and the world now notices your spells and procs, not only your stats. Act I plays as it did, and Gallows Hill is gentler.
• Elites with the same name standing together show one name, not a stack of overlapping ones.
• Past Pyre I the Depths fight back by Heat: the Effigy's mode picker becomes a Heat dial, and the Heat, not your gear, sets how tough the foes are. Every step up pays better item levels, experience, gold and magic find (item level 180 from Heat 155, an Ember Breach at the top of the dial), and your dial starts where your gear fights fair.
• Deep Charts, Ember Breaches and Court Audiences burn at their own Heat, shown on every card, on the floor plaque and on the result next to the Power it expects. Endgame floors hold fewer, tougher foes, and Acts II to V are back to their old crowd size.
• At high Heat a share of every blow sears through armour, and dodge, damage reduction and resistances count for a little less, so no build is untouchable. Your sellswords and pet keep pace with the Heat you burn at.
• Statuses land when they should — a chain, a rune or a free cast that weakens a hit no longer drops the burn, freeze or poison riding on it. Only a foe that passes its save shrugs a status off now.
• On phones, the NEXT pill no longer covers the health globe.
• On phones, sellsword chatter and loot names are smaller, take turns and keep off your hero, your health and mana orbs, the skill buttons and your party, and small buttons such as your sellswords' portraits, the talent star and the quest chip are easier to tap.
• Your sellswords get a Spellbook too: they pick pages for their role, and you can change their picks on the Party sheet.
• Wild Shape turns your Druid into a bear from level 3, and druid sellswords shapeshift as well: a tank druid stays a bear.
• In The Fall and the town siege, a short guide pops up when you level up, saying what you gained and where to spend it.
• You face the foe you're fighting while you move, so walking away backpedals, and bows aim where you look.
• Red Gyre and other held skills show their damage numbers. Spell names no longer print on the ground.
• The legendary pity counter by your gold has a tooltip: how many kills until a guaranteed legendary. It also shows your difficulty's real cap.
• The Talents page scrolls with the mouse wheel at large UI sizes, and the automatic Game & HUD size is one step smaller on desktop.
• Choose your hero fits every class and race once you've unlocked them all.
• Monster touch-ups: the ogre swings a club, magma globs ooze on the floor, and several monsters show their shields, bombs and staves.
• Monster pictures in menus, dungeon pages and dialog now match their new in-game art.
• Quillon has a new portrait, with a face for every mood.
• Every regular monster in the game now has new art at its proper size, from Act I's goblins to Act V's demons.
• Every summon has new art: wolves, fiends, elementals, skeletons, celestials and more, and the summon-form picker shows each form.
• Summons from your gear wear the new art: the Spirit Wolves, Oathbound Skeleton, Tithe Imp, Grove Warden and Bound Grimoire. The Moon Wisp and Mender Spirit no longer go invisible, and your Mirror Twin, Shadow Twin and decoys look like you, gear and all.
• Your weapon and shield no longer cover your hero's face.
• Every item, skill, spell and buff has a new icon, and dropped armour and jewellery lie on the floor as themselves.
• The Effigy in Hearthold is now a weathered stone statue of Vhoruun, its eyes and cracks burning in your chosen difficulty's colour.
• Hearthold's buildings, walls, hedges, fences and bunting have new art, at every upgrade level.
• Hearthold's streets have new art: lamps, trees, market stalls, the well, benches, barrels, carts, beehives and the training dummies.
• Hallowtide in Hearthold has new art: carved jack-o'-lanterns, ghosts, bats, scarecrows, graves and lantern-strung bunting.
• Dungeon floors have new art: every chest, keg, bookcase, bell, crystal and bone pile, the decorations and the floor details. Dropped weapons lie on the floor as themselves.
• Town guards hold their spears again (they had been standing beside them), and the townsfolk's tools sit in their hands.
• The hero banner in town fits its name instead of stretching across the top bar, and the Tier plaque no longer squashes its label.
• Interface polish: the pause and results buttons match the new look, book pages stay readable in high contrast, and a few small-screen overlaps and cut-off labels are fixed.
• High contrast keeps the new iron-bound look and just brightens the text. It used to swap every frame for a plain box.
• New music: 11 hand-picked orchestral tracks for the title, town, dungeons, fights and bosses, mixed with the original score. Choose in Settings → Audio → Music.
• Seeking Fletch and other unique arrow effects now work on arrows you draw, including Multi-Shot.
• A new Hold-to-charge option in Settings → Gameplay: Hold, Auto (one press draws to full and fires) or Instant. You can also set it per skill in the Skills tab.
• Sellsword Spellbook pages show in their Skills list and can go on their bar.
• Codex class pages, the Pets tab and the letter reply box are readable in the new look.
• Town notices that don't fit the top bar fold into a +N button that lists them all.
• Phones in landscape: the town's Settings gear, Tier and gold always stay in the top-right corner (they could slide off the screen).
• Phones in landscape: the Play button on Choose Your Hero no longer slips off the bottom of the screen when the poll or festival banners are showing.
• Long monster and boss names on the dungeon page wrap instead of being cut off.
• Your letters to Quillon are readable again, and Settings clearly lights the option you've picked.
• Spellbook pages no longer show rank 4 and 8 perks you can't pick. Their mastery track lists what they really get: a new rune at ranks 2, 5 and 8 (chosen in the Spellbook) and +30% power at 4 and 8.
• The Wardrobe lists each item once (the best version you've found), not once per tier and rarity, and each unique once.
• Hallowtide head pieces now show in your portrait, and the Wailing Mask has its own look.
• Hallowtide cosmetics show on your hero again: pumpkin and jack heads, the skull, witch hat, bone garb, sheet, gourd shield, soul lantern and bat-wing quiver. So do other uniques' emblems, halos and cloaks.
• Gnome hair and beards no longer flicker while they move, and nor do a few other beards, horns, circlets and gauntlets that blinked for a frame.
• Menus show your hero facing you, so you can see your face and gear: the creator, hero select, the Gear tab, Wardrobe and party sheets, with weapons held at your sides.
• Portraits now show your hero and your sellswords as they look in the world, in the new art: the HUD, the town bar, party frames, the tavern, hero select and everywhere else a face appears.
• Red Gyre and Night Step are in the Spellbook now — pick Red Gyre at the Barbarian's level 4 and Night Step at the Rogue's level 9, or buy them from your class mentor. The old Red Gyre and Night Step talents are gone: a hero who took one gets the talent point back and keeps the skill as a Spellbook page.
• Rot Hex, Blight Harvest, Contagion, Pestilence and Counterspell are Spellbook pages now, and no longer take the place of Malediction, Dark Pact, Siphon Life, Death Nova and Magic Missile. Rot Hex and Contagion come at level 4, Counterspell at 9, Blight Harvest and Pestilence at 14, or from your class mentor. A hero who had one through a talent keeps it as a page, and the old Counterspell talent gives its point back.
• Quillon's lines no longer slip under the Skip button on small screens, and on phones held upright the title's What's New panel shows his aside.
• A line at its ceiling now reads the same number as the line itself: a Ranger's Focus on hit tops out at 0.7, not the 0.9 the tooltip used to quote, and the Forge and Smithy ranges for Focus, Stamina and the other on-hit, on-crit, per-kill and per-hit-taken lines match what your class gets. A line at its ceiling can't be raised by Masterwork, Hone or a Great Work.
• Mythic Emberforged boots now get their fifth line: the Forge can now add Warded or Fortitude to boots, and Mythic Emberforged boots you already own gain the missing line when you next load the game.
• Enchanting Emberforged boots at the Smithy can now offer Warded and Fortitude, so a full set of five lines still gets three choices instead of two. The compendium now says that boots only roll those two lines on Emberforged gear.
• The Forge guide, the Forge page and the Emberforged notes now say which uniques come Emberforged: the Deep uniques. A campaign unique from the world is never Emberforged; a Survey Shard roll or the Curio Cart can hand you one.
• Fire, spit and plague pools now show who cast them, fade faster and vanish soon after their caster falls. Step out at once and they barely sting; linger and they bite harder each second.
• Elites, Champions, Heralds and bosses now have a yellow Poise bar. Your class's big moves fill it (finishers, full draws, Weave reactions, Oathmaul and the rest); break it and the foe is Broken for a few seconds, helpless and taking 30% more damage.
• Sellswords show their Brand: open the Brand tab on the Party sheet to see their runes, Bonds and totals, let them pick their own, or choose a layout for them (the Temple's Rite of the Hireling puts it back to their own).
• The Fall's rubble gate is easier to figure out: while the ember shrine is the next step, the goal line up top says to light it, and standing at the sealed rubble has Quillon keep pointing at it instead of only mentioning it once.
• Inspect cards and hero profiles show the Wardrobe looks a hero is wearing, not just the gear underneath — your pumpkin shows up again.
• Gear you loot no longer arrives locked: lock what you want to keep safe from selling or salvaging. Auto-salvage never touches uniques either way.
• Hits no longer shove everything all the time: only the skills made to push do — Shield Bash, Bull Rush, Leaping Slam, Thunderwave, Grave Charge, Ursine Rush, Ancestral Stampede, Ride Down, Hurl Foe, Blasting Charge and Gale Palm. Basic attacks and every other skill leave the pack where it stands.
• Pyre Tiers press harder on your defenses: each tier above Normal pierces 3 resistance, 2 dodge and 2 damage reduction, so deep runs keep rewarding defensive gear instead of capping out early.
• Portraits everywhere social — friends, the player directory, lobby seats, arena challenges — draw the hero's real gear and Wardrobe looks now, so a pumpkin or a costume shows there too instead of a bare figure.
• Uniques no longer repeat the way they did — every run used to roll from the same sequence, so the same uniques kept coming back wherever you played. Each run rolls its own luck now.

• Classes Reborn: every class's new mechanicVersion 0.25 gives every class a signature mechanic from level 4: hammer storms, kill chains, corpse chains, shapes, songs and more, with runes.
• The Spellbook: pages, runes and the mentorHow the Spellbook works in The Ember Depths 0.25: page picks at levels 4, 9, 14 and 18, runes that change a skill, the class mentor and mastery bonuses.
• New art: heroes, gear, bosses and petsThe Ember Depths 0.25 redraws the cast: 24 hero bodies that wear their gear, 53 bosses, 26 pets in four stages and new effects. Switch back any time.
• The Depths Fight Back: warbands, surges and HeraldsHow the Depths fight in The Ember Depths 0.25: packs with leaders, Champion packs, Swarm Surges, ambushes, Heralds, and blows you have to step out of.

• The Codex belongs to you, not your hero — legendaries, sets, uniques and pet species now gather into one shared book across every hero on the save. Play hardcore, softcore, or both: every find counts toward the same collection.
• A fallen hero's discoveries live on — dying in hardcore no longer buries what the hero found. Everything they logged joins the family Codex and stays there.
• Books you already kept merge for free — the next time each hero plays, their finds pour into the shared Codex. Nothing you've collected is ever lost.

Fixes

• Seeking arrows that pierce now hunt a new mark — Seeking Fletch arrows with Piercing Shots used to just circle the foe they already skewered; now they re-seek the nearest foe they haven't hit yet.
• Comet's Tail's tooltip admits its rhythm — its falling star has always come at most once every two seconds; the power text says so now.
• Ashmaw in The Fall fights at its old pace again — it had picked up the new boss sidestep and the faster stalk meant for the dungeon bosses.

• Tear up charts in bulk — a new Select… mode on the Lodge's chart list lets you tap a pile of low-tier charts (or All shown) and tear them all up at once, one confirm, one payout toast. Compendium
• Two-handed weapons fight back — a greatsword gives up your whole off-hand, so two-handed melee weapons now roll two extra affix lines of their own. One mythic great weapon, six lines — dual wielding still wins on two drops, but it stops being the only answer. Compendium
• Charts mark their last Survey point — a chart whose Pristine clear would still pay a Survey point shows a little "+1 pt" chip in the Lodge list and on its card, so you can spot the runs worth doing. Compendium

Fixes

• Volley Fire and the Quiver of the Split Sky actually stack now — every fan effect fires its own volley instead of the first one shadowing the rest.
• Rooted Stance's pierce works through fan shots too, not just plain arrows.
• The hero sheet's Avg damage now counts flat elemental damage on weapons — those lines ride every basic hit.
• The damage meter no longer flings itself to the top-left corner while you drag it.
• The enchant picker's background no longer flickers over the forge glow.
• Lingering ground patches now wear their name — a Fiendfire circle, an enemy's poison pool, a Sanctuary dome each prints its spell's name inside the ring so you know what's underfoot.
• The damage meter's Sources credit the right power — a falling star's damage lands under Comet's Tail, not under whatever gloves or paragon power fired in the same swing.
• Discord linking's Copy now copies just the code — paste it after typing /link instead of pasting the whole command as a message.
• The boss banner follows the fight — run past one boss to reach the next and the bar now shows the one you're actually swinging at, instead of freezing on the one you left behind.
• Finished writs always pay their guild XP now — the weekly per-member cap still reins in grinding, but it was swallowing writ rewards too.

• A unique's own lines are forge lines now — its fixed ◆ stats can be Honed, climb all twelve Masterwork ranks, and take a Great Work's ×1.25, right beside its ◇ lines on the bench. Reforge and Temper still only work on rolled lines — a fixed line has no roll to re-roll and no seat to enchant. Compendium
• Great Works aim where it counts — when a rank offers its three lines, a unique's fixed ◆ lines are in the pool, so the ×1.25 can land on the stat the whole item is about. Compendium
• Potential with somewhere to go — a forged unique's Forging Potential and your Emberglass finally spend on the stats that made you buy it, on top of the hotter fixed lines and top-quarter powers a forged unique already rolls with. Compendium

Fixes

• Loadouts: an off-hand that couldn't ride its kit — a quiver with no bow in the set you swapped to — was parked in a slot the next swap overwrote and silently vanished. It now lands in your bag like any piece you can't legally wear.
• Curio Cart prices came down to earth: a set piece is 2 shards, not 4, and every offer costs roughly half what it did — the cart's premium over a Survey Shard roll now pays for the named piece and the higher item level, not a lottery markup.

• Six finished pieces a week — once the Deep has touched your account, a new Curios tab at the Merchant stocks real, named gear you can inspect before you pay: two set pieces, a campaign unique, a Deep unique, an Emberforged mythic and the week's marquee, all rolled above your Pyre Tier's item level. Compendium
• Paid in Deep coin — Survey Shards, Emberglass and a Starshard on the marquee. The same currencies Pristine charts and Breach Wardens already pay, so every deep clear feeds the cart.
• Sold means sold — a bought piece leaves the cart until the week rolls; whatever's left rerolls for a few Emberglass when the week feels thin.

Fixes

• Emberforged uniques pull their weight: a unique that drops Emberforged now reads about 8% hotter on every fixed stat line and its powers roll in the top quarter of their range — before, forging a unique only opened the Forge door without the item itself gaining anything.

• Seven new elite affixes — watch the name plate: Stampede lowers its head and charges down a lane, Pouncer leaps straight onto you, and Grappler harpoons *itself* to whoever is farthest away. Kite carelessly and you'll learn about Stormborn's lightning, Weaver's rooting webs and Hexing's weakening curse; crowd one carelessly and Thorned erupts. Compendium
• Bosses stop standing still — every boss can now dart to your flank mid-fight and all of them stalk you a little faster. The days of trading blows with a planted boss are over.
• Five new boss moves woven into the act bosses' phases: shockwaves that march at you, a ring of ground that detonates (safe point-blank or clear out), a beam that rakes across where you stand, a mountain-cracking leap with aftershocks, and bone spikes that erupt beneath each of you in turn. Grukk, Morvaine, Old Gutrot, Seraphel and Vhoruun each picked up two.

Fixes

• Wardrobe: looks that draw identically (a colour-pinned robe or cloak at several tiers) now list once instead of five times, and every worn piece does something you can see — gloves cast a soft glow, boots leave footprints in their own colours, wispy cloaks shed mist — so a robe that covers the sprite still shows your picks.
• The Headless Rider pays real gear now: every Hallowtide piece carries stats (the costume days are over) and it drops one piece from its table a kill, on top of The Hollow Crown — no more handfuls of cosmetic paper at once.
• Ring of the Undertow leaves an undertow on the ground: the pull stays open a moment and keeps dragging foes in, instead of a blink-and-miss-it pop.
• Smothered Light: the dark closes in with its own gloom wherever the curse comes from — a wager, a chart's marks or a rite — and lifts the moment it ends, instead of leaving the floor quietly dimmer for good.

• The Rider drops a whole Hallowtide set — every kill now drops two pieces besides The Hollow Crown: one for every slot, from mask to boots to ring, and every class can wear every piece. Pieces you don't have come first, so a full set takes about seven kills. The festival ends October 31st; what you collect is yours to keep. Compendium
• The rarest: The Rider's Spare Head — put it on and your head *becomes* a carved, candle-lit jack-o'-lantern that glows in the dark. Not a hat. Your head.
• Every piece is a Wardrobe look — the Wailing Mask, Grave-Grasp Gloves, the Wisp-Walkers and the rest go over any helm, armour or boots you wear, cloth, leather or plate. Your weapon and off-hand drop as the look that fits them: a reaper's scythe, a gravedigger's sickle, a jack-o'-lantern staff, a witchlight wand, a ribcage bow, a carved-pumpkin shield, a soul lantern.
• Spooky touches — the Wisp-Walkers leave ghostly footprints, bats burst from the kills of whoever wears the Thirteenth Bat, and the Rider goes down in a cloud of bats and sweets.
• Meet the Gourdling — a tiny jack-o'-lantern that sometimes hops out of the Rider's saddlebag. It spits burning seeds, giggles at its own jokes, and grows into the vine-crowned Harvest Jack. Compendium

Fixes

• Item cards: a unique's power showed only its name, and a set piece hid its set bonuses — the quick card now shows what the power does and the (N) set bonuses it works toward.

• Every difficulty is one step harder — and pays like it. Easy is now what Medium was, Medium what Hard was, Hard what Epic was and Epic what Legendary was, rewards included: more XP, gold, magic find and better drops on every step up. If the Depths felt like a stroll, they don't now. Compendium
• A new Legendary — for those who want to die: foes have 4× their health and damage, in packs of up to 20, most of them hunt you through your minions, bosses rage sooner and the stairs barely heal. It pays the most of all: +80% XP, +110% magic find and bosses that often drop an extra legendary. Compendium
• Your first steps are unchanged — The Fall and your first night in Hearthold play exactly as before, and the Daily Descent and Weekly Rite keep their numbers, so old scores still stand.

• Sanctuary shows itself — Ward of Bone, Sanctuary of Valor, Verdant Sanctuary and every sanctuary power now draws its golden dome on the ground for as long as it stands. It was always halving your damage; now you can see the shelter you're standing in.
• Friends see it too — the dome rides to every hero in the run, so your party knows where the safe ground is when the ward rises.
• Step inside — allies inside the ring take half damage for the dome's four seconds, same as ever; it just no longer hides.

Fixes

• Inspecting another hero: View tree opened the talent tree *behind* the inspect card — invisible, and it quietly closed itself. It now opens on top like any sheet over a card, and Esc and the ✕ close it properly.

• Quivers roll real bonuses — they now roll the archer's lines: Dexterity, hit, damage, flat damage, crit chance and crit damage, attack speed, skill damage, damage vs elites, fire, cold, lightning and poison arrows, afflictions and life on hit. A Rare quiver used to stop at one line; now it fills out like any other piece.
• Better bases — the Hunting Quiver gives +3% attack speed and +1% crit chance, and the Broadhead Quiver +8% damage and +10% crit damage (was +4% damage). Quivers you already own get this too.
• Enchanted arrows — a quiver's +1, +2… now adds +1 to hit and +3% damage per plus. It used to do nothing.

Fixes

• Hero creator: on a wide screen the Look step shows Hair, Face, Eyes and Extras all at once in four panels, instead of a few small controls in one corner of an empty page.
• iPhone (Home Screen app): the game now reaches the bottom edge of the screen in landscape, with no empty strip under it.
• iPhone: menus no longer slide under the Dynamic Island when it's on the left of the screen, and the unspent talent points reminder no longer sits on top of an open menu.

• Pets stay in the fight — a hurt pet now breaks off to your side to catch its breath, steps out of marked attacks, shrugs off blows aimed at you, gets back up when the fight ends, and is tougher on Hard and above. Cinder and friends go down far less often.
• Healers heal pets — your heals, your healer sellswords' heals, healing auras, heals over time and the Scroll of Mending now mend your pet too. Heroes still come first.
• Stances matter more — Defensive and Follow pets take less damage and pull back sooner when they're hurt.

• Controller: A is your action button — it opens chests, pulls levers, uses shrines and the stairs, picks up loot, opens the Ember Chest and puts on a fresh upgrade. A small prompt shows what A will do, and it still attacks when a foe is in front of you.
• The Ember Chest on a controller — its pools are a proper menu now: move between them, A to buy, B to close.
• Bind the upgrade key on a pad — "Equip ▲ upgrade" can now go on any controller button in Settings → Key bindings → Controller.

Fixes

• More hero slots: every account can now keep one hero per class (14), up from 8, and Choose Your Hero fits them all.
• The "Now in 2.5D" chart on the title screen now hangs open for everyone; tap its ✕ to roll it up until the next update.
• On phones held sideways, the pet sheet shows your pet as a compact header beside the tabs, so its name, level and bond are always in view; stars and growth stages moved to the Stats tab.
• You can see Hexrot and Plague spread now: when a rotting foe dies, the rot visibly arcs through the air to each new host, and a newly infected foe flashes the rot's sigil with a closing ring. It always spread; in a tight pack it was just too small to notice.
• No more cut-off text anywhere: item names, chat, the loot feed, the quick-equip card, tabs, the talent tree, the campaign map, hero stats and every menu now show their words in full at any window size, wrapping instead of trailing off with "…".
• The title screen always shows the night scene and fills big screens properly, and Choose Your Hero now uses the whole screen: a big spotlight on your hero and every hero card visible, with full names, at any window size.
• Hearthold no longer turns hazy and washed out after you close a menu or popup: a timing slip made the screen's hit and loot flashes build up instead of fading.
• The 2.5D view no longer lays a milky haze over everything on Ultra and High: colours are crisp again, and torches, braziers and lava glow softly the way they should.
• Your quest goal in Hearthold now sits below the top bar instead of hiding behind it, at every UI size, and building names step aside rather than cover it.
• The pet sheet no longer cuts words short: stance names, stage labels and pet names show in full on every screen size, and tabs wrap to a second row instead of running off the side.
• Walkable town on a controller: after closing a building with B, pressing A no longer opens your hero card by mistake.
• Controller menus spend less time each frame working out which panel is on top.

• Sealed Vaults — some floors now hide a gold-banded door in the wall, its glyph glowing in the colour of the task that opens it. Walk up to it and the door tells you what it wants.
• Five ways in — race a flame from brazier to brazier, tread the runes in the order carved over the door, kill the Vault Warden before it slips back inside, hold a burning circle against the waves, or find three hidden levers nearby. Fail one and you can try again on the spot.
• The hoard — an epic-or-better piece and two rares, all a little higher level than the floor, plus gold, materials, a short party buff and a small chance of a legendary.
• Always optional, never in your way — at most one per floor, off the main path, and an emptied vault stays empty. In co-op anyone can solve it, and everyone gets their own hoard.
• New achievements — Safecracker and Vaultbreaker (Vaultbreaker is on Steam too). Every number is on the new Sealed Vaults compendium page. Compendium

• New for Warlocks: Hexrot — Rot Hex curses a whole line of foes, and the rot creeps and leaps to fresh hosts as they fall. Blight Harvest bursts it all at once and heals you for it. Find it on the Warlock's talent tree (Hexblight, then the Patron's Rot keystone and the Pandemic capstone).
• New for Necromancers: Pestilence — Contagion's spores spread Plague-rot through a pack, your summons and festering corpses carry it further, and the Pestilence nova bursts it. Find it on the Necromancer's talent tree (Plaguewright, then Plaguebearer and The Grey Death).
• Rot that's fair — each infected foe passes the rot on to at most two more, bosses only take a light dose and never pass it on, and it's strongest against packs, not single bosses.
• Two new legendaries push the builds further: the Orb of the Creeping Rot and The Pestilent Codex.
• See it spread — infected foes show the rot, and you can watch it arc from body to body. Skills a talent swaps in now show their own name, icon and description on your bar and in tooltips.

• Pick your pet in one tap — every pet you own sits in a strip across the top of the pet sheet; tap one to look at it, and Make active is always right there, no scrolling. Your current companion wears a gold "With you" ribbon.
• Stances at a glance — Aggressive, Defensive and Follow are three buttons side by side, with what each one does written underneath.
• Everything else in tabs — Skills, Care (bond, treats, charm and the Ascension rite), Talents, Synergies and Stats each get their own tab instead of one long scroll. On a controller, LB / RB switch tabs.
• The Menagerie shows who's with you — a card at the top of the Stable shows your active pet with its stance, a quick Change pet and Stay home.

Fixes

• The skill bar now shows the new redrawn icons at full detail; they were being drawn from the small version and looked blocky.
• On phones held sideways, tapping an item in your bag shows Equip again: the buttons ran off the edge of the screen, and a reminder could cover them.

• Every skill icon redrawn — all classes, every pet skill and combo, mastery perks, party scrolls and talent badges have new art: sharper, and each one shows what the skill actually does, so they're easy to tell apart at a glance.
• Enemy attacks you can always read — a foe's attack warning is now the clearest thing on the floor: a bright edge and a fill that grows until it strikes, shown even when someone is standing in it. Your own and your allies' areas use dashed outlines, so friend and foe never look alike.
• Calmer party fights — your sellswords' and pets' spell effects are toned down so you can follow your own; rains of arrows and meteors stay in check, explosions match their element (fire, frost, thunder, necrotic…), and big skills look bigger than small ones.
• Better light — no more white glare blobs from light shafts or Orbiter elites, big fights no longer wash the floor out, nights in Hearthold are properly dark with pools of lamplight, torches and candles flicker naturally, and glow looks the same on every graphics setting (Low now keeps the colours of High).
• Tidier numbers — pickups add up into one running total ("+33 embers") instead of a stack, and crits on a pack step aside instead of merging into one yellow block. Loot never flashes red like danger.
• Swapped skills behave — when a talent replaces a skill (like Counterspell), the bar shows the new skill's icon and name, and it aims the way the new skill does on mouse, touch and controller.

• Classic 2D is the default again — if you never picked a view, you play in classic 2D. The 2.5D view stays one switch away (Settings → Graphics → View → 2.5D view (experimental)), and if you already turned it on, it stays on.
• Zoom with the mouse wheel — in 2.5D the wheel (or a trackpad pinch) zooms smoothly to any distance, and it's remembered on your device. The zoom button, Z and the left stick still jump between the set distances. In classic 2D the wheel steps one zoom level per notch.
• A calmer screen in fights — fewer floating words over the action, health bars only on foes that are hurt or worth watching, loot names only on the drops that matter, and one pop-up at a time instead of a pile. Bosses get one introduction, not three.
• One look for things you can use — chests, shrines, levers and other interactables share one soft white highlight when you're near, so they stand out from breakable clutter.
• Smoother on High and Ultra — the stutters some players saw while walking through new areas on the top graphics settings are much reduced, and the in-game HUD costs less every frame. If your computer still can't keep up, the game trims effects on its own and the frame counter tells you.
• The Fall teaches zoom — the camera step now mentions the mouse wheel (or pinch on phones), and zooming counts toward it.
• Key hints fit — the controls line at the bottom of the screen wraps instead of being cut off, so new keys like Q / E for the camera show up.

Fixes

• Chat messages show up instantly: yours the moment you hit Send, everyone else's without the old delay. (Thanks for the report!)
• The card that shows what an upgrade changed no longer gets squeezed off the bottom right of the screen: when there's no room beside the skill bar, it sits above the right orb.
• New heroes on a computer now start with WASD + auto-aim controls. Already picked a control style? Nothing changes, and you can switch any time in Settings → Gameplay → Desktop controls.

• The Fall bites back — the caverns and Ashmaw hit for real now. Your sellswords bleed, get knocked down and climb back up, and Quillon's lucky d20 saves you only once. Lose to Ashmaw and the town hauls you out on the rope: you keep your level, your gear and your class weapon, and Mazzy still comes home.
• Blacking out — fall in The Fall, or to Karnok at the gates of Hearthold, and the world slows, the sound goes under, and voices drift through the dark before you come to.
• Turn the 2.5D camera with Q and E — tap for a small step, hold to keep turning. Your pet's command moves to G (Shift + G changes its stance), and in the walkable town you open a building with F or Space. Keys you've set yourself stay as they are.
• The boss bar stays in view — the menu buttons along the top never cover a boss's health again. The boss bar, your target and the chase bar fit around them, and on Steam Deck the boss bar sits just under the buttons.
• Smoother big fights — crowded fights take much less work, especially in 2.5D: hordes, packs with lots of burning and frozen foes, and a busy screen stutter far less.
• The classic sounds are back — hits, crits and kills sound the way they did before 0.24, and loot lands quietly again.
• Trading works — accepting a trade no longer silently fails. The trade window opens for both of you, and the items and gold change hands once you both confirm.

Fixes

• Pressing Lock again in a trade you'd already locked no longer knocks a confirmed trade back a step.

• Tearing up charts works every time — a chart with Marks now leaves the Lodge the moment you tear it up, and the ink it gives back shows in the note. It used to stay on screen, and tearing it again failed.
• The ★ only shows when you have talent points — on the computer skill bar it stayed up as an empty ★ after you spent every point.
• No more "Enter Bramble Hollow" on every new tier — once you've cleared it, the big button and its objective stay gone when you step up a World Tier.
• 2.5D on phones sees twice as far — on phones and tablets the 2.5D camera starts farther out, showing about twice as much of the floor, and two fingers pinch to zoom in or out (remembered on your device).

• The 2.5D view (experimental) — the world stands up: real walls, torches and lava that light the rooms around them, and a camera you can turn (middle-drag or Alt + drag, two fingers, or the right stick). It's on by default on computers; on phones and tablets the classic view stays and you can try 2.5D whenever you like. Prefer classic 2D? Settings → Graphics → View → 2.5D view (experimental): switch it off and the game restarts right where you were. Details
• Dungeons rebuilt — for everyone, in 2D and 2.5D: bigger rooms and wider corridors, cathedral naves, rotundas, cisterns and libraries, set pieces in every act, and Act V becomes one long descent into Vhoruun's cathedral. Details
• The Fall, rebuilt — the opening is a chain of big caverns now: packs and a mimic, the eye in the lava, Ashmaw bursting from the rift, a rope to climb out on, and a walkthrough that ticks itself off as you learn each control. Details
• Hits that land, with real sound — a struck foe freezes for a heartbeat on crits, big hits and kills, sparks scale with the damage, and loot bursts out and lands with a tick. Hits, swings, spells, coins, chests and every loot rarity now use recorded sound effects, each with a few takes so repeats never sound the same. Act I's first dungeons hide an elite on every floor that warns you before its big attack.
• A screen you can read — the interface now scales to your screen (bigger on 1080p and up, and on handhelds), with UI size and Text size side by side in Settings and a new Huge text step. Pop-ups take turns instead of piling up, and toasts never cover a result screen.
• Loot at a glance — item cards now lead with the full name, a BETTER / WORSE / SIDEGRADE verdict and the lines that matter. Hold Alt (or tap More details) for the whole card. The top bar shows gold and the currencies for the screen you're on; the rest live in your purse.
• Controls that keep up — let go of a held walk and your hero finishes the stride, your hits pick a sensible target when you haven't chosen one, and in Classic controls clicking a foe walks you into reach. The whole walkable town works with a pad, there's an on-screen keyboard for names and chat, Steam Deck and Steam controllers show Xbox buttons, and a solo run pauses itself when you switch away.
• New heroes sooner — the Necromancer joins when you clear The Sunken Crypt and the Druid when you clear Act I; the Warlock now joins after Act II, and Descent depth 25 also unlocks the Dread Knight. Classes you already have stay yours, and until level 5 you can change your hero's class for free from the hero sheet.

Fixes

• If you were partway through a floor when this update arrived, you pick up at the start of that floor, on its new layout.
• Dungeon floors are less cluttered, especially in Act V: decorations stay out of the way of fights, doors and chests, and set pieces line up with the rooms they stand in.
• Brand rune picks: the run, the party banner and the Brand screen now say when your next pick arrives (every 5 Legend levels).
• Nine uniques whose powers weren't counted in Power now are, including the Heart of the Ember Depths, the Hollow Crown, Tomorrow's Grin and Mountain's Weight.
• Darkness around your hero on some graphics cards: the game now checks the lighting once and falls back to a safe version, and Settings → Performance has a new Dungeon lighting choice (Auto, Compatible, Plain).
• Rescuing a captive: if the escort dies you can free them again and finish the quest, and the reward is paid once.
• Your sellswords in The Fall and the town's defence now fight at your level, not above it.
• The title logo and class names are no longer cut off.
• The rating question now comes after your first real dungeon, and players who leave early can tell us in one tap what stopped them.
• The cloud save prompt now says plainly when the cloud copy is newer, and which heroes it is missing.

• The 2.5D view (experimental)The Ember Depths' experimental 2.5D view: what it is, who gets it, how to turn the camera, how to switch back to classic 2D, and the known issues.
• Rebuilt dungeons and a new FallEvery dungeon floor in The Ember Depths is rebuilt for 2D and 2.5D alike: bigger rooms, wider halls, new room styles, set pieces, and a new opening Fall.

• Twelve hours and gone — channel chat now keeps only the last half-day of talk. The tavern wall stays about tonight's plans and this morning's hauls, not a scroll back through the whole history of the realm.
• Scrolling still works — everything said in the last twelve hours is still there to page through like before; the window just has an edge now.
• Quieter noise — fight cards, item links and LFG posts age out with everything else, so what you see when you open a channel is always what's happening *now*.

Fixes

• Your leaderboard stats are back: after an Ember Court fight, some heroes' level, kills and gold stopped updating on the boards (and a few showed level 0). They fill in again the next time you play.
• Shield Bash's rank line was giving nothing since armour became whole numbers; it now gives damage reduction like Iron Guard.
• The Singular now asks for every campaign unique on the boards too (85), matching what the game already showed.
• Legend level-ups never pay a rune each time: a rune pick comes every 5 Legend levels. The run banner and the Brand screen now say when the next pick is, and the level that earns one says so.
• Rescue quests: if the captive you were escorting falls, they are held again where you found them, so you can free them again instead of having to start over. And small floors no longer leave a rescue quest without a captive.
• The Heart of the Ember Depths now counts toward your gear Power: its fire conversion was being priced against foes that resist fire and came out as nothing.
• Black dungeons on some displays: the game checks how your screen draws the darkness and picks a way that works, very large windows are drawn at a size your screen can show, and Settings → Accessibility → Performance has a Dungeon lighting choice (Auto, Compatible, Plain) if it still goes dark.

• A fresh coat on every screen — buttons, panels, sheets, the town menu and the pause screen all wear soft rounded glass now: easier to read, calmer on the eyes, and it lets the art do the showing off.
• The world stays the world — only the menus changed. Hearthold, the dungeons, your heroes and their gear are still hand-placed pixels; the chrome around them just stopped elbowing in.
• Menus move with you now — panels glide in with smooth motion and text settles into a clean, highly readable face everywhere you tap.
• Miss the old frames? — the pixel chrome is still in the game: Settings → Screen → Interface style → Pixel swaps back instantly, no restart.

• Panels open the instant you tap — sheets, dialogs and the gear overlay land on screen in the same moment as your press instead of hesitating a beat first.
• Tapping around is lighter — switching a tab, picking a filter or toggling Select mode just redraws that sheet instead of quietly re-saving the game and rebuilding half the screen behind it.
• Item glow stopped taxing the grid — legendary and unique tiles breathe through a cheap tint now, so a bag full of shinies scrolls smoothly instead of stuttering.
• Marking loot as seen doesn't hitch — opening a shiny new item clears its dot without rebuilding the whole menu around you.

Fixes

• Scroll fades no longer flicker on panels that are on their way out.

• The whole screen is the town — the old side rail is gone everywhere: Hearthold runs edge to edge on phones and desktops alike, and the bar, buttons and panels float lightly over the world so the middle of your screen is the town itself, not a column of chrome.
• One button, every screen — a menu button in the bottom-left corner unfolds a tidy grid of everything the rail held — Adventure, Hero, Bag, Party, Social, Arena, Town — badges and all, at full size on desktop. Tap anywhere else and it tucks itself away.
• Zoom the town out — a magnifier in the bottom-right corner steps the camera through four distances, just like the dungeon's zoom, and Hearthold now greets you at its widest view. Your pick is remembered on this device.
• Wider sheets on wider screens — panels and dialogs dock to the screen edges and stretch properly on landscape phones, desktops and ultrawide displays instead of floating in the middle of nowhere.

Fixes

• The town's quick menu (every place by name) no longer hides under the left rail, and door plates keep clear of the dock instead of spilling over it.
• The menu button, zoom toggle and pop-up panel — and the co-op chat button — no longer paint with a tiled frame pattern; they get the clean stone face they were meant to.
• Locked World Tier tiles show a lock instead of repeating the requirements; the full gate text is still on the tile and in the tier card.

• One place to empty your pack — the Bag's Clear…, the Smithy's Clear bag… and the Merchant's Sell… now all open the same review sheet: pick how far to go, see every item that would go and exactly what it pays, tap any tile to spare it, then confirm once.
• Every rarity goes — the sweeps used to stop at Epic and leave legendaries and mythics to clear by hand. Now they go all the way up, and Everything really means everything: uniques too, behind their own switch.
• Locked is sacred — locked items never join a clear. ▲ upgrades stay out unless you turn their switch on. Whatever stays is spelled out on the sheet before you commit.
• Filter, then clear — run a search or a rarity filter at the Merchant and Sell… offers just what the grid shows; in the Bag's pick mode a new All shown button grabs every salvageable item your filters leave in view.

Fixes

• On phones the Ember Breach threat bar no longer hangs over the middle of the screen — it docks as a slim strip at the bottom edge, out of the fight, and the chest prompt and chest picker stack neatly above it instead of covering the centre. Deep Chart runs get the same treatment for their chart chip.

• Deep World Tiers push back — past the campaign, monsters that outlevel you toughen up the deeper they stand: their swings land for what they're meant to, and they connect more often against walls of armor no world tier was meant to carry. Details
• Armor stops being a wall — a shield-and-plate tank's edge is fully intact, but stacking armor far past it now gives diminishing returns: deep foes connect sometimes instead of almost never. You still dodge best; you just can't be untouchable.
• Deep monsters keep their wits — their defenses and their willpower resume growing where they used to stall, so past the campaign's ceiling you hit often but not always, and crowd-control isn't a sure thing.
• Deeper still pays more — tier XP keeps climbing, just less steeply at the deep end; Legend levels keep moving without sprinting ahead of the world.
• The campaign is untouched — every Normal-tier run replays identically. This only reaches heroes whose gear has outrun their world.

• The deep end fights backHow v0.23.11 keeps deep World Tiers dangerous: monsters toughen up with depth, armor has limits, deep foes keep their edge.

• The Headless Rider sheds costumes — not every kill, but often enough: a Skull Cowl (a bare skull over your hood), a Bone Garb (chalk ribs on a pale robe), a Pale Sheet (a ragged ghost of a cape) and a Hexing Hat (a brim wide enough to curse under). It favours pieces you haven't collected yet.
• They're Wardrobe looks first, items second — costume pieces have no stats and no powers. Pick one up and its look is yours forever; wear it over your real armour from the Wardrobe on the hero sheet, or equip it raw for the joke.
• Every class can join the costume party — like The Hollow Crown, each piece fits any hero. The Hallowtide showcase lists what the Rider can drop.

Fixes

• Unique signature marks on hoods now paint over the hair-dyed cowl, so the Skull Cowl shows a skull rather than tinted hair.
• The Hallowtide showcase now pictures all four costume pieces up front — the ones already in your Wardrobe get a check.
• Breaches pay out like they're meant to: a cleared floor still short of its Ember Chest now draws stragglers worth real embers each, so the chest is a quick mop-up, not a long vigil.
• Ember Chests no longer spawn right beside the exit stairs, where an eager tap could send you down instead of opening it.
• The Survey's 'Extra Mark Slot' node actually works at the Cartographer's Lodge — charts show five slots and Ink and Scribe can fill the fifth.
• Enchanting a weapon offers real offence: attack speed, crit damage and friends can appear more than once among the three options, instead of two slots always being utility filler.
• Finding a pet no longer fires three pop-ups at once — the pickup and the join toast cover it.
• Town labels stay in the town: a building tag at the scene's left edge can't slide onto the dock buttons anymore.
• The camera stops drifting between zooms — the picture now holds its frame while the game quietly adjusts render quality under the hood.
• The Mire of Lost Souls is readable: darker walls against brighter mud, and bog water that's plainly water on the minimap.

• The Headless Rider is a horseman now — a proper spectral stallion with a mane and tail of cold fire, rearing when its big swings land, and the rider himself: dark plate, a torn cape, an ember burning where his head should be, his own grinning gourd cradled under one arm and a sabre in the other. It reads from across the room — run, or don't.
• Same hunt, grander frame — it still rides out on any combat floor this month carrying The Hollow Crown. The Hallowtide showcase and its card show the new look too.
• Ember Chests always pay up — leave a breach floor with embers still lying on it and the next floors still feed you enough to open every chest, and monsters that die over pits or in walls drop their embers where you can reach them.

Fixes

• Ember Chests: embers left behind on an earlier floor no longer count as still-grabbed loot, so a cleared floor always stirs more ember-bearing stragglers until its chest is paid for.
• Ember Chests: a monster killed over a pit or inside a wall now drops its embers where you can reach them.

• A Hallowtide showcase on your first October visit — the game tells you what's haunting the Deep: the Headless Rider, its rules, and a real look at The Hollow Crown's stats at your level. It opens once a year on its own; tap the glowing HALLOWTIDE sign on the title or hero-select screens, or Menu → Hallowtide in town, to see it again.
• The menus go full festival — pumpkin piles flicker in the corners, cobwebs creep over the top edges, ghosts drift through, a whole bat swarm crosses the sky, and the screen's heading gets its own jacks. On Choose Your Hero, pumpkin patches flank your hero's spotlight.
• Find the festival anytime — the hanging HALLOWTIDE sign on the title and hero-select screens is a button now, and the town Menu lists Hallowtide all month. Both re-open the showcase whenever you want another look.

• The festival is everywhere — jack-o'-lanterns grin from every doorstep, the stair heads, the stalls and the well; pumpkin-lantern garlands sag over the square and the gate road; ghosts drift the gardens and hover the chasm; witch-lights burn cold on the rim; a scarecrow rules the fields; candles, webs and bones where they'd scare you. All October; gone on November 1st.
• The menus dress up too — the title screen and Choose Your Hero wear the garland, corner jacks, drifting bats and the festival's name.
• "On you right now" — the Hero sheet's Stats tab lists every boon and affliction on you while a run is live: its icon and name, who put it there, its stacks and its clock. Tap a row for the full card — what it does with real numbers, and how to shake it.

Fixes

• The Hallowtide dressing now shows in the walkable town — it first appeared only on the Classic view.

• The town dresses up — carved pumpkins grin at the gate, the market stalls and the well, bats hang over the stalls, ghosts drift through the graveyard, and a witchlight burns where you'd least want one. All of October; gone on November 1st.
• The Headless Rider wanders — a rare seasonal menace can turn up on any combat floor this month: a spectral rider carrying its own grinning head. Put it down and the gourd is yours.
• The Hollow Crown — the rider's gourd is a pumpkin-crowned hood *any* class can wear: its grin flares every few seconds in battle, searing and Frightening the room, and it shares out little heals to your party. Its look goes to your Wardrobe like any unique. Compendium
• The Brand opens up — the Bonds pane names your next goal and taps through to the socket that completes it; carrying a rune previews which Bonds light or break on every socket; and the rank-8 Deepen/Bridge choice finally explains itself, previewing the links Bridge would lend. Compendium
• Role guidance on the talent sheet — Tank, Healer and DPS cards explain what each job means, which ones your class has unlocked, and let you switch postures right there. Open and recommended tree nodes glow.
• Ember Breach pacing — the Warden answers on deeper floors now (floor 1 only rarely); each floor's embers dry up after enough drops, so chests take real farming — but a cleared floor always stirs enough stragglers to finish its chest. Compendium
• A sharper face — the whole game, the run HUD and the website now share one pixel font: clearer at a glance, everywhere.

• The lobby is the leader's Hearthold — join a friend's party and you stand in *their* town: their buildings at their levels, their Menagerie, the Effigy burning in their difficulty's colour, their Court's gold. Wander it between dungeons — it's all real.
• Their counters work for you — buy from their Merchant's shelves, price rites at their Temple, mend gear at their Smithy, browse their Lodge. Whatever you buy, craft or repair is still yours.
• Not your land, not your hammer — you can't upgrade someone else's town, and your own gold, stash, stock, sellswords and pets never leave your account. Leave the party and you're home again.

Fixes

• Item comparisons no longer show Armor Class, Attack bonus or spell DC with a tail of decimals (like −5.900000000000006) — those stats are whole numbers again.

• Switch forms anywhere — the Form picker on every summon skill works mid-dungeon now, not just in Hearthold: swap a Stone Elemental for a Flame one and your next cast calls it. Every class, every summon, town or dungeon.
• Sellswords switch too — a companion's own summon form on their Party sheet obeys the same rule, so Ash's elementals answer mid-delve as well.
• Bound, not locked — a talent like the Wizard's Stone Ward still binds the Stone Elemental first; it just doesn't hold the picker shut anymore. Pick another form and it's yours, talent or no.

Fixes

• The breach bar and the map chip no longer sit on top of a boss's health plate — they drop clear under it during the fight, and the breach bar is slimmer all around.
• Fixed a rare black screen some players hit in town or mid-run on laptops — the game now catches the display hiccup and picks you right back up where you were, floor included.

• Vhoruun's statue got its dread back — the Effigy by the north gate stands twice the height it was: mantled wings flaring beside the horns, clawed hands sunk low over a three-step plinth ringed with runes, and a molten heart seething through the cracks in its chest.
• It watches you now — the eyes burn in your difficulty's colour… and every few seconds they blink. Let it be a lesson.
• It seethes — on a slow breath the core flares, the crown of embers leaps, and sparks ride up off its shoulders. With the Court Sigil whole it still burns gold, calmer — but not tame.

Fixes

• The FPS meter now shows the worst frame and a hitch count alongside the average, so a split-second stall is no longer invisible at high fps.
• Hearthold no longer re-measures the window every frame — one less stutter source in town.
• A busy chat channel no longer makes town hitch every few seconds — the log repaints its recent tail instead of the whole history, and ↑ Older messages widens it as before.
• Chat is lighter still — new lines append without a repaint, and the channel tabs only rebuild when a badge actually moves.

• Pick your resolution — new under Settings → Accessibility → Performance: Render resolution offers Full, 1440p and 1080p. The world draws at the lower size and stretches to fill the screen, so a 4K display can run like a smaller one when big fights get busy.
• No more town hiccups — Hearthold used to catch its breath for a split second every so often even when the frame counter read high. Walking the city is smoother now.
• Yours and nobody else's — resolution is kept on this device, like Graphics quality. Your desktop can sit at 1440p while your phone minds its own.

Fixes

• The town's chat was rebuilding its whole history whenever anyone's online count flickered — a pause every few seconds. It now only repaints when something actually changed.
• Sharing your hero sheet with a party no longer re-summarises it every second.

• Who's who — every named townsperson wears a nameplate now, their trade printed underneath: Garrick the Smith, Sister Maren the Priestess, Mazzy the Town Sweetheart (hers is pink, of course). Works in the Classic view too.
• Your call — Settings → Show nameplates governs them with the hero plates: all shows everyone, party only keeps just players and sellswords, off hides them all.
• Plates mind their manners — they shuffle out of each other's way as folk wander, and your party's tags always stay on top. The animals, sadly, remain anonymous.

Fixes

• On a desktop in town, the chat box moved to the bottom-left so it no longer sits on top of the Hearthold list.

• Walk around Hearthold — the town is now a living city quarter you run through: timbered townhouses, the chasm in the square, the Temple and Guild Hall up on the terrace under the castle, a canal, villagers going about their day and night.
• Shops at the counter — walk up to the smith's forge, the Tavern's bar or the merchant's stall and their sheet opens. Tap a building (or its name) to walk there, or use the new Hearthold list at the top left to open any place at once.
• The town under attack — new heroes climb out of The Fall into a square overrun by the things that followed them up. Hold it with your rescuers, then face Karnok the Bastion-Breaker at the difficulty you chose. Beat him for a legendary piece of armour or jewellery; fall, and his warband loots the town and slinks back below.
• Rebuild the town — the assault left its mark: a building at level 1 is scorched and boarded up, and its first upgrade is a Repair. Each level after makes it grander.
• New foes in The Fall — every chamber now shows something new: bomb-throwing sappers, hexers, wolves and boar-riders, skeleton mages and a molten hobgoblin with a tower shield.
• Prefer the old view? Settings → Display → Town: Classic view keeps the picture-book town you know.

Fixes

• In the walkable town, Vhoruun's Effigy glows gold again when your Court Sigil is whole (the Court will hear you), and your hero's Brand glow shows while you walk around.
• Notices stay put in the walkable town: toasts (a friend coming online, a salvage answer, a trade) sit in one spot under the top bar instead of drifting over it and the chat button and Trade channel behave like they do in the classic view.

• Every World Tier has a guardian — tiers no longer open by playing the campaign again. Each one is held by one of the Crowned: the tyrants you broke, re-crowned in the fire below. Win an Audience with them at Vhoruun's Effigy and the tier is yours. Details Compendium
• Crown Shards — they drop from Breach Wardens (50%), chart bosses (10%, 15% while your chart is Pristine), Ember Chests (5% a roll) and every new 10 floors of a Descent record. The odds are printed, and after 6 misses in a row the next shard is certain. Details
• Build a Court Sigil, seek an Audience — enough shards form a sigil for your next gate. Open the Effigy, spend it and face the Crowned alone or with your party. Losing costs nothing: the sigil is only spent on a win. Details
• 12 Crowned in 3 Circles — the Circle of Embers, the Circle of Ash and the White Fire. Each Crowned is a new fight with phases of its own, and the last gate is the Effigy itself. Compendium
• The Court opens at level 20 — the first hero of your realm to get there is noticed, and the Effigy tells you where your next gate waits. Details
• Your tiers are kept — every World Tier you had earned stays yours, and the Effigy shows you the gate that is next. The Descent no longer opens a second tier on top of a clear: its records pay shards instead. Details Compendium
• Titles and a leaderboard — win every gate of a Circle to become a Courtier, an Ash-Courtier or, at the end, Unthroned. The Court has its own leaderboard for the highest gate you have won. Leaderboards

• The Ember Court: a guardian for every tierHow The Ember Depths 0.22 gates World Tiers: 12 Crowned in 3 Circles, Crown Shards with printed odds, a Court Sigil and an Audience at the Effigy.
• World Tiers: what each one changesEvery World Tier in The Ember Depths, from Normal to Torment X: 12 tiers to open at the Ember Court, +10 monster levels each and 15% stronger affixes.

• The Brand replaces the Legend board — past level 20, every Legend level is a rank for your Brand: a hex of 19 sockets with your class rune burning in the Heart. One screen, a few clear choices, and your whole build at a glance. Details Compendium
• Runes in four colours — 32 runes in Pyre, Bulwark, Hunt and Covenant, 6 two-colour Prisms and a class rune for each of the 14 classes. Every rank makes a rune stronger: at rank 4 its power wakes, at 8 you choose Deepen or Bridge, and at 12 it is Named. Details Compendium
• Bonds and the Great Bond — runes of one colour that touch join into a Bond: 3 sockets, 5, and 7 for a Great Bond. Move one rune to finish a group and watch it fire in the next fight. Details Compendium
• A rune on every stretch of the road — the Awakening hands you 3, a pick of 1 of 3 answers every 5 Legend levels, and chart bosses (1 in 5), Breach Wardens (1 in 2) and Ember Chests drop more. The odds are printed, and a drop you already own turns into Crest XP. Details Compendium
• Crests become inlays — set a Crest in any socket to strengthen the runes around it. You get one inlay, and one more for every Great Bond, up to 5. Your Crests keep their levels. Details Compendium
• Wear your Brand — your strongest Bonds give it a title ("the Ashstalker"), a small copy of your Brand shows on Inspect, the leaderboards and party frames, and Legend levels past 209 light Brand Flames. Details Compendium
• Try anything — runes and Crests move for free in town, every rank can be undone, and each class has two suggested Brands you can fill in one tap. Every card shows its live numbers, and every spend shows before and after. Compendium
• Nothing is lost — your Legend points become ranks to spend, every node you took became a rune, your Crests are kept and every hero starts with a free respec. Details Compendium

Fixes

• Crits hit with everything you have: a crit now multiplies your whole hit (weapon dice, ability, flat and elemental damage) by ×1.5 plus your Crit Damage, so crit gear finally pays off and every point of Crit Damage counts, whatever your weapon. Power now scores crits at what they really deal, and monsters are a touch tougher to match.
• Damage numbers are calmer: hits on the same foe add up into one number that grows as you strike, crits still pop big and yellow, burns and poisons show one total a second instead of a number per tick, your pet's and summons' numbers are smaller and dimmer, and hits on you only show when they really hurt. Settings → Accessibility → Damage numbers chooses All, Mine (the new default: other players' and sellswords' numbers hidden), Big hits only or Off, and Off now means no numbers at all. Crit numbers stack in a short column instead of piling on top of each other, and stay clear of the boss's health bar.
• Comparing gear now shows Crit damage and the average damage of a swing with crits, so a Crit Damage item no longer looks like a bare Power number.
• Quillon and every other voice talk again: since yesterday's co-op update their lines (in The Fall, in dungeons, everywhere) were silently dropped.
• On a mouse and keyboard, new heroes' skills now find their own target (your focus, else the nearest foe) instead of flying wherever the cursor happens to be. Prefer aiming with the mouse? Settings → Gameplay → Desktop controls → Skills aim → At the cursor. Existing heroes keep what they had.
• The Brand's first hour reads plainer: Bonds are named instead of numbered, rune powers are called abilities, the Awakening's colour cards open to details on tap, a Legend 0 hero sees how much XP is left to Legend 1, and a returning player gets a before-and-after card for their Brand with a confirm before the suggested Brand is applied.

• The Brand: your Legend levels, in a hexHow the Brand works in The Ember Depths 0.21: a hex of 19 sockets, runes in four colours, your class rune in the Heart and what each Legend level buys.
• Ranks: wake, choose, NamedEvery rank of a Brand socket in The Ember Depths: when a rune wakes, the Deepen or Bridge choice at rank 8, Named at rank 12, and undo and respec costs.
• Bonds and the Great BondHow Bonds work in The Ember Depths 0.21: connected runes of one colour light powers at 3, 5 and 7 sockets, with every Bond and Great Bond in a table.
• Earning runes, with the odds printedHow to earn Brand runes in The Ember Depths 0.21: the Awakening, a pick of three every 5 Legend levels, chart boss, Warden and chest drops with printed odds.
• Crests are inlays nowHow Crests work in The Ember Depths 0.21: inlay one in any socket to amplify the runes around it, how many inlays you get, and what stays the same.
• Titles, Flames and being seenBrand titles like the Ashstalker, the mini-Brand on Inspect and leaderboards, the town glow and Brand Flames for Legend levels past 209 in The Ember Depths.
• Your Legend board became your BrandWhat happens to your heroes in The Ember Depths 0.21: Legend points become ranks, every node becomes a rune, Crests stay, and your first respec is free.

• Choose how many caches to open — pick ×1, ×10, ×50, ×100 or Max at the top of Mystery Caches and every slot buys that many. Your choice is remembered.
• Open until it pays off — Until… keeps opening until you find a Legendary, a Set piece or a Unique, with a limit you set so it never runs away with your gold. If Fortune's Favor guarantees a legendary sooner, it tells you and stops there.
• See your loot straight away — results appear the moment you buy, with no window in the way. Big finds glow in place, the best come first, and a tally shows what you got and how close your next guaranteed legendary is.
• A full bag spills into your stash — when your bag is full, cache finds go to your stash, and the results tell you so. If both are full you're never charged; the Merchant says why and sends you to make room.
• A check before big spends — opening a large batch asks first, with the gold it will cost.
• Item charges have their own spot — a power like the Tolling Hour keeps one steady icon on your buff strip: dim while charging, lit when your next skill is empowered. Its tooltip shows your real numbers and stays open while you read it.
• Caps say what's wasted — the hero sheet now reads "cap 150% · 254% wasted", so you know exactly how much gear to move elsewhere.
• Lock a whole filter at once — in your bag's Lock… mode, Select all shown picks everything your filters show, and bag buttons are easier to tap on phones.

Fixes

• Skill cards now show your chance to hit a typical foe your level, say when a skill can't crit (save skills and never-miss skills don't roll), and that taunts and interrupts land even on a miss. Talent cards say "when it hits" needs a hit that lands.
• Buying a cache that rolled a unique no longer hid your results behind a reveal you couldn't close.
• Confirm buttons everywhere are bigger and further apart on phones.
• The title screen's showcase now has both recent updates, 0.20 and 0.19: swipe or tap between them.
• Skills no longer keep casting by themselves after a new talent's name floats over your hero: your last skill (and potions) stopped repeating on their own and draining your Ki, mana or energy.
• Sellswords no longer come back with a fresh kit every time they're rehired: a sellsword brings their gear once, and hired again they arrive ready for whatever you hand them from your bag. Gear they already gave you stays yours.
• Volley Fire now actually fans your basic shots every time: attacking in place (Shift), aiming with WASD + mouse or shooting at a foe out of reach fired one plain arrow instead. Spark of Magic, the sweeps of Sweeping Blows and Reckless Abandon, and uniques that reshape your basic attack now work however you attack too. Hallowed Blade's arc of light now deals radiant damage, and Spark of Magic's burst is always fire.
• Banked ability points are now spent in one go: with several Improvements waiting (your refunded feats, say), place every point on one screen, up to +2 per Improvement in a single ability, then Confirm. "Use suggested" and "Clear" sit under the scores, and the suggestion now raises your main stat towards 20 first.
• The damage meter no longer slides under the minimap on bigger screens (the Training Grounds, or with the meter on in a dungeon): it moves clear of the map, the quest tracker and your skills by itself whenever they change size.
• Easier to see what your gear does: the Training Grounds have a Meter button next to Drills that brings the damage meter back after you hide it, and the meter's By source (or a tap on your own bar) splits your damage by skill, basic attack, item power, talent and damage over time — item powers named after the item you wear, like Gloves of the Grave-Touched, and talents by name. The after-run Breakdown names them the same way, the meter is easier to read on big screens, and How to Play → Combat explains it all.
• Item compare has a Compare at +10 switch: it reads the new item and the one it replaces as if both were fully upgraded at the Smithy, for every ▲/▼ and the Power change, so a +10 item doesn't win just for its upgrades. Your choice is remembered on this device.
• The hero sheet now says plainly what your crits do: "Your crits deal about 119% of a normal hit (195.5 vs 164)", which dice grow (only the weapon dice: your ability modifier and flat damage stay the same) and at what Crit Damage your next extra die comes, since dice round to whole dice.
• Unique items no longer show more than they give: a fixed ◆ line that Smithy upgrades push past its ceiling (a +10 ring's crit chance read 14% but gave 10%) now reads the 10% it really gives, with a ⌃ whose tip says what it would have been. Enchant options and the Ascend preview read the same way, and the compendium's unique pages show the ranges that can actually count.
• Covenant's small nodes on the Legend board now show their bonus ("You and allies within 8 tiles: +0.3% Damage") and every one you take really counts: before, only one of your Covenant damage auras applied, however many you had.
• Deep uniques' third power can always be woken at the Forge now: Hone works on them even after Masterwork, with their Forging Potential spent or with their line already at its ceiling (it costs gold and materials, and the line stays as it is if it can't rise). The item card says how to wake a sleeping power, and the Forge shows a Wake button with the price.

• Talent trees replace feats — every class has a class tree and a tree for each subclass, 722 talents in all, and talents change how your skills play: Cleave sets foes Burning, Whirlwind drags them in, a block taunts the foe that hit you. You earn a ★ point every level from 2 and one for the first kill of each act boss: 24 by level 20. Details Compendium
• Your build, your way — rows open as you spend, keystones and capstones make you choose, and some talents want a skill at a certain mastery rank, so using a skill opens the talents that love it. Recommended spends your points along a path made for your subclass and role. Compendium
• Change your mind at the Temple — the Rite of Kindling gives every point back: free below level 10 and for your first reset, then 40 gold × level squared. Undo your last pick during a visit, swap a keystone for the one beside it for a quarter of a reset, or keep two setups (a tank build and a damage build, say) and switch between them in town for free. Details Compendium
• Level-ups you can feel — a golden ★ flies to your talent button, a boss's first kill brings a bonus point, the first time a new talent fires its name floats over your hero, and a slim bar shows what you're working toward next. New heroes get the Awakening: choose your path, then your first talent. Your first clear of Bramble Hollow pays a big XP bonus, and back in town the surprises come one at a time. Details Compendium
• The Legend board — Legend levels now fill a board of your own: your class's 9×9 map of nodes, with gates that attach themed boards (Pyre, Bulwark, Hunt, Covenant) and up to 205 points to spend. Details Compendium
• Crests — 13 Crests drop from chart bosses and Breach Wardens. Socket one in a board to boost the nodes around it, level it up with every chart you clear, and wake its power at level 15. Details Compendium
• Party roles — take the role of tank, healer or damage for a small bonus and an aura for your allies. Your class decides which roles you can take: a fighter tanks or deals damage, a paladin can do all three, a bard heals or deals damage, a rogue only deals damage. Taunts hold foes, heals go where they're needed, interrupts break boss casts, and sellswords take roles too. Hire cards, dungeon cards, the lobby and the group-finder show each role, so you can see what a party is missing. Any mix can win; a balanced one wins safer. Details Compendium
• Your heroes carry over — every feat becomes 2 spare ability points, your old Legend points carry over one for one onto the new board, and every hero gets a free talent reset and a free Legend reset. Nothing is lost. Details

• Talent trees: points, rows and keystonesHow talent trees work in The Ember Depths 0.20: where points come from, class and subclass trees, keystones and capstones, mastery gates and Recommended.
• Changing your mind: respec, swaps and loadoutsEvery way to change a talent build in The Ember Depths: Undo, the Rite of Kindling, swapping a keystone, the Rite of Renewal and two saved role loadouts.
• Level-ups you can feel, and a faster first hourWhat a level-up looks like in The Ember Depths 0.20: the talent star, boss bonus points, the first time a talent fires, the next-unlock bar and the Awakening.
• The Legend board: boards, routes and nodesHow the Legend board works in The Ember Depths 0.20: Legend points past level 20, your class board, rare and legendary nodes, themed boards and routes.
• Crests: sockets, levels and awakeningEvery Crest in The Ember Depths 0.20: how sockets boost the nodes around them, where Crests drop, how they level up from charts, and what awakening adds.
• Party roles: tank, healer and damageParty roles in The Ember Depths 0.20: which classes take which role, what each role gives you and your allies, heals, shields, interrupts and sellsword roles.
• Threat and taunts: who the monsters hitHow threat and taunts work in The Ember Depths 0.20: what builds threat, how it fades, when foes switch targets, taunts, Unswayed and dropping threat.
• Your heroes carry over: feats and Legend pointsWhat happens to the heroes you already have in The Ember Depths 0.20: feats become ability points, talent and Legend points wait for you, and free resets.

• Nobody gets up on their own — in a party, a downed player stays down until someone helps: the leader and every partner alike.
• Stand over them — stay beside a fallen friend and they're back on their feet in 4 seconds (2.5 with two of you), at a third of their health. Walk away and the progress fades.
• Revivify and scrolls still work — a cleric or paladin's Revivify, or a Scroll of Raising read by anyone, brings them back too, and your sellswords will spend a scroll on a downed partner.
• No clock while a friend stands — you can't bleed out while someone is still fighting; if the whole party goes down, the run ends. Taking the stairs still brings everyone along.
• Hardcore: ten seconds, for everyone — leader or partner, a hardcore hero has ten seconds to be raised before they're gone for good.

• Mystery caches, ten at a time — every cache has a ×10 button. Ten opened at once land in one tidy grid, best finds first, with one flourish if something special is in there. A single cache ends on a clean card: see the item next to what you wear, then Equip, Lock, Salvage or Buy again without leaving the Merchant.
• Auto-salvage works on caches — gambled items follow your auto-salvage rules just like loot you pick up in the Depths, and the results tell you what was salvaged and what it gave you.
• See when an item's charge is ready — powers like the Pendant of the Tolling Hour and the Slippers of the Folded Step now show an icon on your buff strip while your next skill is empowered, and it disappears the moment you spend it.
• Know your caps — the hero sheet shows the cap on every capped stat and, when your gear pushes past it, exactly how much is going to waste. Crit damage has its own row, and the crit tooltips spell out that crit chance has no diminishing returns.
• Lock many items at once — tap Lock… in your bag, pick as many items as you like and lock or unlock them in one go.
• Pets fetch your gear too — your pet now carries item drops to you, but only the ones you'd auto-pick up anyway, and never another player's loot or anything that won't fit in your bag.

• Your own loot, your own luck — in a party, every player's drops and gold are rolled with their own magic find and gold find, set pieces and Deep finds included. A full bag no longer eats your loot: it waits on the ground until you make room.
• Your progress comes home with you — skill mastery and rank-ups, dungeon clears, first-clear rewards, World Tier unlocks and party quest goals all count for partners now, not just the leader.
• Potions that match — a partner's potion heals like the leader's (your flask tier, potion power, cleanses burns and poison), and a refused one gives you the charge back.
• See what the leader sees — partners get hit flashes, boss names and phases, warded bosses, downed-ally beacons, loot that tosses and spins, the stairs arrow and music that rises with the fight. When you're down, the camera follows a friend.
• Your hits, your screen — your own crits shake your screen and your swings make their sound the moment you press, instead of the leader's.
• Hold my place — lose connection mid-run and your hero waits for you for 20 seconds; a phone switching networks reconnects by itself within a few seconds.
• Fairer fights — monsters chase whoever is closest instead of the leader, partners stand their ground in a crowd, a partner's pet follows their taps, and partners can open Ember Chests.

• Band of the Mirror Twin keeps charging forward — when your twin repeats a rush or dash skill, you now carry on the way you were going, instead of being yanked straight back to where you started. The same goes for a free second cast from the Crown of the Fractured Mind.
• Gloves of the Grave-Touched hit for what the gloves say — the delayed doom now deals exactly its percentage of the damage you dealt the foe during the fuse. Your damage bonuses were being counted a second time on top, so 80% gloves could pay out more than twice what you'd dealt.
• Belt of the Jotunn's blood nova is honest too — the nova now deals exactly its percentage of your max health to everything around you, as the belt promises. Like the gloves, it was stacking all your damage bonuses on top and hitting several times harder than intended. The Tiefling's Hellish Rebuke works the same way and gets the same fix.
• Power numbers follow — gear scores for both legendaries are re-measured to match how hard they really hit now.

• Quillon asks once you're out of the chasm — after the rescue, new heroes pick how hard the Depths fight from here, with a feel for Medium fresh in their hands, instead of being set to Medium without asking.
• Know what you're choosing — each mode shows, in plain words, how tough and how many foes are, the XP and loot you earn, and what a death costs. Tap Full details for every rule. All the numbers are on the [Modes](/modes#difficulty) page.
• No wrong answer — Medium is marked Recommended, and you can change it any time at Vhoruun's Effigy in Hearthold.
• The rescue plays the same for everyone — the hunt for Mazzy at the bottom of the chasm is always at Medium. Your pick takes over from there.
• Pick your race and look before you fall — Choose your hero now lets you choose race, male or female, hair, skin and hairstyle, and every class card shows that same person. Tap the name to make it yours; Quillon won't ask again at the top of the rope.

• Your partner's game is your game — co-op partners now take knockbacks and pulls, stumble when frightened, notice secrets, spring traps and see them coming, get the same skill cooldowns as the leader, and keep playing (loot, chests, fountains, puzzles, the lights on) while the leader waits to be raised.
• A full party is a real fight — monsters scale with every player in the party, not just the leader and their sellswords, and each partner's XP uses their own level, not the leader's.
• Ambushes are back — ambush rooms spring when anyone in the party walks in. They had gone quiet for everyone.
• Reloads don't cost you the party — refresh the page, let the browser restore a tab, come back from a crash: you're back in your party and pulled straight into the run, and your hero answers again (it used to keep walking on its own, and couldn't cast).
• No more frozen worlds — a dropped connection on either side now recovers by itself within a couple of seconds, with a "Reconnecting to the leader…" note instead of a world that stopped moving.
• Everyone animates — partners' heroes, monsters and deaths play their frames on a guest's screen; a click on a foe walks you there on your own screen exactly as on the leader's.

Fixes

• The party relay only accepts the leader's word for what happens in a run: a player can no longer send another member items, XP, a run end or a hardcore death.
• Hardcore partners bleeding out are raised by sellswords on the same terms as the leader.

• Upgrades show on the ground — a drop that beats what you're wearing gets a green ▲ on its label and a slim green beam. Beams are saved for legendaries and upgrades, so they mean something.
• Tap to equip — pick up an upgrade and its card says so; tap it (or press R) to put it on right there. A burst of upgrades collapses into one card that opens your bag on the best one.
• Your bag points the way — the Bag button wears a green ▲ while an upgrade waits unseen, and the slot glows until you look at it.
• A calmer feed — at most three or four cards at once, the important ones first; gold floats up beside your gold counter instead of filling the feed.
• Your choice — Settings → Gameplay → Loot: show all gear, only upgrades and rare finds, or none, and turn gold and material notices on or off on their own.

• Choose how loot is announced — Settings → Gameplay → Loot feed: Normal (the full cards), Small (one tidy line per item) or Off.
• Small keeps the verdict — a one-line card still shows the item's icon, name and whether it's an upgrade.
• Off is really off — no item cards and no gold lines; legendaries and uniques still get their big banner.
• Gear gets the spotlight — gold, potions, scrap and other materials (auto-salvage included) always show as small lines; the cards are for gear.

Fixes

• Hiring any sellsword at the Tavern on your first visit now finishes the step — not just the one marked Recommended.
• Hitting a monster across the room no longer leaves you fighting a damage number in the dark: the darkness lifts around it and it glows for a few seconds, so you can see what you're shooting.

• Every pickup gets a proper card — the item's icon, its name in its rarity colour, and a clear verdict: ▲ upgrade, ▼ downgrade, same, needs a higher level, or not for your class.
• Upgrades stand out — a green ▲ chip, a longer stay and a little pulse; legendaries, uniques and set pieces glow.
• Gold adds up — piles you grab in quick succession count up into one line instead of a stack of messages.
• Right where you're looking — on desktop the feed rises just above your skill bar; on phones it sits clear of your thumbs and your hero.

• You can't leave a dungeon while foes are on you — Return to Town greys out mid-fight with a short note; get clear first and it lights back up.
• The exit portal won't end a boss fight — while a boss is awake nearby, the way out stays shut.
• Closing the game mid-fight counts as fleeing — and as a fall if you were nearly dead, so a quick exit is never a free escape.

Fixes

• Item pickups show again during The Fall and in busy fights: the green ▲ upgrade note stays on screen, and gold piles no longer push it away.

• Four new ways to refill your resource — gear can now roll lines that give back Stamina, Spell Points, Cunning and the rest on a hit (weapons, gloves, quivers), on a crit (rings, quivers, weapons), on a kill (foci, amulets, belts) or when you're struck (armour, shields, helms). Compendium
• Made for your class — each class leans toward the two lines that suit how it fights, so a fighter finds more on-hit gear and a wizard more on-kill gear. Every number is scaled to your class's own pool, so the same line is worth the same to everyone.
• Bigger pools, fairly — new Deep-Welled lines scale with your class, a new "of the Wellspring" line adds a percentage of your maximum, and casters and martials each find them on more of their gear. The Deep-Welled lines you already own keep exactly what they give today.
• All of it on your Hero sheet — the Skills tab's resource panel lists every new line you wear and exactly how much it restores, and the Smithy shows each line in the wearer's own resource.

Fixes

• Closing a menu in a dungeon now closes everything it opened: no item card or highlight left hanging on screen.
• Hunter's Mark now says what it does: every foe gets two chances to drop a unique for your class.

• No more pauses — the game no longer freezes for a split second on critical hits, special effects, boss kills, big loot drops or level-ups. Fights keep moving, and so do you.
• No stall when a new buff or debuff appears — the first time a new effect icon popped up, the game could hang for up to two seconds. That's gone.
• Smoother damage numbers — floating numbers, elite names and loot labels are cheaper to draw, so big pulls no longer hiccup.

Fixes

• Big fights stay smooth: charging into a huge pack no longer drags the game down or delays your moves and skills.

• The Fall's guiding arrow follows the tunnels — it no longer points through solid rock, so after the first big fight you're never sent back the way you came.
• One digger at a time, in the right order — the arrow takes you to each goblin digger along the path, and never back to one you've passed.
• The ember shrine lights as you walk past — and Quillon nudges you if you're standing at its rubble without lighting it.

• Controller players: the cursor stays where you were — after you equip, unequip, sell, salvage, stash or hire, it stays on the same item or the one that took its place, instead of jumping back to the top.
• Back to where you started — closing an item card returns the cursor to the tile you opened it from, and your list keeps its scroll.
• Empty gear slots can be selected — unequip with a controller and the cursor stays on that slot, ready for the next piece.

• The Deep, on the title screen — tap the chart hanging over Hearthold for a tour of everything The Deep Charts added, a first look at what's coming next, and one-tap links to the guide, the patch notes and the website. Compendium
• Charts pay for the risk you bring — on a Deep Chart your World Tier and difficulty now stack onto the chart's item level: +2 for every World Tier above Normal, and Hard, Epic or Legendary add their bonus on top. Compendium
• See where your resource comes from — the Hero sheet's Skills tab now shows exactly how your Stamina, Spell Points or Cunning come back: how much every basic hit restores, the extra on a crit, what your gear, race and pet add, and when regen pauses.
• A new face in your tabs — the game and the website now wear the Gate, the same flame-lit archway as our Discord, crisp from the browser tab to your home screen.
• Item levels climb to 180 — health, damage and the other flat lines keep growing all the way up, so the deepest charts drop the strongest gear in the game. Details

• Every hardcore hero builds their own Hearthold — buildings start at level 1, exactly like a brand-new town, and nothing carries over from your softcore town or your other hardcore heroes.
• Hardcore towns set straight — any hardcore town that picked up buildings it never earned starts fresh. Your hero's gold, gear and clears are kept, and your softcore town is untouched.
• No more vanishing hardcore savings — making a softcore hero right after your first hardcore one no longer loses the hardcore hero's store.

• Wardrobe weapon looks actually show — staffs, wands, bows, daggers and swords now look different in your hero's hands for every tier and rarity: their own metal, wood and gem.
• Rarity you can see — uncommon and better weapons get a coloured edge, rare and better a coloured gem, bow wrap or spear tassel.
• Robes and gloves too — fine robes carry their rarity in the trim, and a rare glove's mark no longer hides behind the weapon you're holding.

• Quillon's Poll — on the hero select screen, propose the next class or race for the Order with a name and a one-line hook. Everyone can see it and cheer it with Me too.
• The top ideas go to a vote — the most-cheered proposals become the finalists, everyone gets one vote, and the tally shows once you've cast yours.
• Your name on the winner — the winning proposal gets built, and its proposer is credited on the result and in the notes when it ships. Quillon writes to you when your idea makes the ballot, wins, or joins a similar one.
• Party scrolls on the keyboard — press 7, 8 or 9 to read Mending, Raising or Mass Resurrection on the spot. Change the keys in Settings → Key bindings; the satchel shows them on each scroll.
• Scrolls and the Bag on a controller — D-pad ↓ opens your scroll satchel, then X / Y / B read Mending / Raising / Mass Resurrection without stopping the fight. D-pad → opens your Bag mid-run, and Y opens it anywhere in Hearthold.
• Pet stance and Quests no longer take a controller button by default. Give them one in Settings if you like; Quests is always in the pause menu.

• A new pet joins you on the spot — make a pet you just found active and it's at your side straight away; your old companion trots home to the Menagerie.
• In co-op too — the Pet panel's Found this run tab has a Take it along button, for hosts and guests alike.
• Fresh screenshots and a new trailer — the website shows the new heroes, The Fall and the fight with Ashmaw.

• Any class you've unlocked can take The Fall — starting a new hero with The Fall now offers every class you've earned, prestige paths included, on a hero select that fits every screen.
• A rescue party for every class — each class falls in beside a stranded party of its own: Ruk, Zyra, Sable, Vestige and more join the fight.
• Every class gets its gift — whoever you pick climbs out with their own class's unique weapon.

• The climb back to Hearthold looks the part — the scene where the town hauls you out of the chasm is no longer a blurry close-up: it's drawn as crisp as the town itself, with the crowd, Mazzy and the rope all in frame.
• Named your hero already? Brammle remembers — pick a name in the full creator on your way into The Fall and nobody asks you again at the top of the rope.
• A next step for every new hero — start a new hero with The Fall on an account you already play and the town points them at Bramble Hollow until their first dungeon run.

• Charts: dungeons you keep — beat the Act V finale and bosses, the Endless Descent and Ember Breaches start dropping Charts: one dungeon, a depth from Tier 1 to 16 and up to 4 Marks. There are 43 Marks: Perils make a chart harder, Boons make it richer, Twists reshape the dungeon, and the chart prints exactly what its Danger pays before you step in. Clear it without falling for a Pristine clear (richer loot, a better shot at a deeper chart); fall, and the chart is only torn, never lost. Details Compendium
• The Cartographer's Lodge — a new building on the Adventure map once the Act V finale falls, with 5 levels to raise. Keep up to 40 charts on its map table, Ink Marks onto them and Erase them, take a Scribe's choice of 3, Scorch a chart for a gamble, Tear up the ones you don't want for materials and Draw blank charts of your own. Details Compendium
• Ember Breaches — every hour one dungeon breaches for 55 minutes, the same one for everyone. It plays a world tier harder: every kill drops a glowing pile of Embers to pick up, and a Threat meter calls ambushes and then the Breach Warden. Ember Chests glow and show as a key on your map, each one guarded: first by an elite pack, then by a champion's pack, then by a mini-boss. Beat the guards, pay in Embers and choose what the chest rolls. Fall, and half your Embers scatter on the floor for you or a friend to grab back. Details Compendium
• Emberforged gear, the Forge and Masterwork — deep charts and Breach Wardens drop Emberforged gear: an extra line, top-quarter rolls and Forging Potential to spend. At Smithy level 6 the Forge Reforges, Tempers and Hones it, and Masterwork climbs it 12 ranks on Emberglass, with a Great Work of your choosing at ranks 4, 8, 12. Nothing ever breaks. The Smithy can now also break an item's Seals to enchant more than one line, and every line has a ceiling it can't pass: resistances roll rarer, and gear you already own is trimmed to match. Details Compendium
• Deep gear — 3 sets, 20 legendaries and 12 uniques that only deep charts, Breach Wardens and Survey Shards give up, never the campaign. Each has its own spectacle: an ember ward that bursts when it breaks, a lantern beam sweeping the floor, shadow decoys that taunt and shatter, a fissure torn across the room. Every Deep unique has a third power that sleeps until you hone it at the Forge: a meteor for every fallen elite, a rewind to where you stood three seconds ago, a lethal blow that can't kill you. Details Compendium
• The Survey — every new tier you clear Pristine earns a Survey point for a 31-node board in the Lodge: deeper charts, an extra Mark slot, longer breaches, more Embers and a favoured dungeon in each act. It shapes loot and maps only, never your hero's stats, and the Temple's Rite of the Surveyor hands every point back when you want to rebuild. Survey Shards, from deep Pristine clears and Wardens, buy an Emberforged roll in the slot you choose at the Merchant. Details Compendium
• Heritage powers and three new races — all 12 races now have a heritage passive you can see in a fight: a human's Rally, an elf's Fey Step, a dwarf's Stone Stance, a dragonborn's breath and more. Three new races are earned in the Deep: the Undead (fall 15 times, or lose a hardcore hero), the Demon (bring down a Breach Warden) and the Blood Elf (clear a Tier 4 chart). Details Compendium
• Finding your way in the Deep — Help → The Deep explains every endgame system in one card each, first-time tips point you to the right building, and reaching level 20 now shows where the endgame starts. The deepest chart you clear climbs a new leaderboard: Tier 8 earns the Cartographer title and Tier 12 Deep-Charted. Bring friends: the party runs the leader's chart or breach and everyone keeps their own Pristine and Embers (for now chests and chart drops go to the leader). Compendium

Fixes

• The Smithy's enchant picker shows each option's real range, ceiling included.
• Heroes who were already level 20 get a short tour of the Deep the first time they come home.

• Deep Charts: maps, tiers and the LodgeHow charts work in The Ember Depths: where they drop, what the 16 tiers mean, Pristine and torn clears, and every Lodge verb with its price.
• Marks: every Peril, Boon and TwistAll 43 Marks you can put on a chart in The Ember Depths: what each Peril, Boon and Twist does, its Danger, and how the printed rewards are worked out.
• Ember Breaches: hourly world eventsHow Ember Breaches work in The Ember Depths: the hourly schedule, Embers and Threat, the Breach Warden, Ember Chests with printed odds, and the death rule.
• Emberforged gear and the ForgeEmberforged gear and the Forge in The Ember Depths: Reforge, Temper and Hone, Masterwork and Emberglass, Seals that open more lines, and Survey Shards.
• Deep gear: sets, legendaries and uniquesThe Deep gear of The Ember Depths: 3 sets, 20 legendaries and 12 uniques that only the deepest charts and Breach Wardens drop, with every bonus and power.
• The Survey: your atlas of the deepThe Survey board in The Ember Depths: how to earn Survey points, all 31 nodes with their ranks and costs, loot-only effects, and respec at the Temple.
• Races: heritage passives and the Deep racesEvery race in The Ember Depths now has a heritage passive you can see in a fight, and three new races arrive: the Undead, the Demon and the Blood Elf.
• Line ceilings and rarer resistancesEvery item line in The Ember Depths now has a ceiling it never passes, resistances roll rarer and one at a time, and gear you already own is trimmed to match.

• Sacred Weapon really sets your weapon ablaze — every basic attack adds holy damage while it lasts.
• Flurry of Blows lands all three blows, one after another.
• Eldritch Blast fires extra beams at levels 5, 11 and 17, and the extra beams can strike the foes beside your target.
• Vow of Enmity bites elites — its bonus damage against elite foes now applies.
• Loyal sellswords get their full perks — the extra health and elemental damage they promised now kick in.

Fixes

• Every new hero, hardcore included, can start with The Fall (and earn its unique), even while your first hero is still finding their feet in town.

• Basic attacks fuel your skills — every basic attack that lands restores a little Stamina, Rage, Spell Points or whatever your class runs on, even right after you cast.
• Keep swinging between spells — the next big skill comes around sooner, and your resource bar flashes on every gain.
• Crits pay a bit more — a critical basic hit restores half again as much. Resource Regen gear boosts it too.

• Your Daily Descent score counts — a thorough clear is no longer refused by the board for killing too much, and a refused or unreachable post no longer spends your day's one scored attempt. The Rites card now tells you plainly when today's attempt is spent, and a score that couldn't reach the board is retried. Compendium
• No more stand-offs in the Witch-Light Marsh — big bosses now find a way round the water instead of stalling at a plank they can't fit on, and any monster that gets wedged for a few seconds shakes itself loose. Your auto-aim shoots across water and lava, as your arrows always could.
• Leave your pet at home — the pet sheet and the Menagerie have a Stay home button, so you can delve alone when you want to.
• Gloves of the Grave-Touched — the doom now counts every point you land on the doomed foe, bleeds and burns included, so bleed builds finally feel the gloves.
• Every skill says what it does — hold or hover a skill on the pad, the hero sheet, the level-up screen or the creator and it spells out its damage, shields, heals and durations with your own numbers. Compendium

• Desktop controls are now three clear styles — Classic, WASD + mouse aim and WASD + auto-aim, each explained in one line in Settings → Gameplay.
• WASD + auto-aim means it — the mouse never aims or turns your hero. Attacks and skills find your focus or the nearest foe; Tab picks a focus.
• WASD + mouse aim — your hero now faces the cursor, even while walking.
• Classic is predictable — skills always fire where the cursor points, instead of switching to auto-aim when the mouse sits still. Prefer clicking foes to attack? Pick Click foes under the Classic card.

• A clear first goal back in town — after the climb, one of your rescuers tells you they're drinking to you at the Tavern, and the button takes you straight there.
• Your first hire is on the house — the Tavern shows the three who saved you first, your class's twin marked Recommended, and a big FREE hire button.
• Playing The Fall again? Veterans without a sellsword get a nudge toward the Tavern too (regular price).

Fixes

• Achievement banners no longer cover the Tavern on your first visit.
• The chat button no longer shows over the climb back to town.

• Sellswords get out of the fire — your hired swords now step out of slam circles, charge lines and burning pools the moment they appear, and keep fighting while they move. Everywhere, not just in the chasm.
• The stranded party fights like a party — in the chasm they flank Ashmaw, keep their distance when they should, and never stand around.
• A combo and a finisher — at half health the three unload together and Ashmaw staggers; when it reels, Quillon hands you the killing blow.
• A shorter boss fight — Ashmaw now goes down in under a minute for every class.

• Every hero, redrawn — real legs with knees and boots, hands that grip their weapons, belts, hems and layered clothes, lit by the dungeon's fire from below.
• They move like they mean it — a proper walk where the feet plant and lift, a breathing idle with a blink, and new attack and cast poses timed to every swing and spell.
• A little flair per class — a fighter's tabard, a wizard's star-trimmed hem, a ranger's fletching, a rogue's scarf and a cleric's glinting symbol. Hair, capes and tabards sway as you run.
• Your gear fits the new look — every helm, chest piece, glove, boot, cloak and weapon sits on the new bodies, uniques and their glows included.

• A stage for your hero — choosing a hero now happens at the lip of the chasm at night, with your pick standing tall in the firelight, showing off their signature move.
• Know your class at a glance — every class card shows how tough it is, how hard it hits and how easy it is to pick up.
• Someone new — don't love the name or face you rolled? One tap rolls another.
• The full creator gets the same treatment — the scene, the big full-body preview and your portrait, side by side.

• You wake up next to a friend — the first stranded sellsword is lying dazed right where you land, and fights beside you from the very first goblin.
• The party grows as you go — a second sellsword joins at the glowing elite, the third at Ashmaw's door.
• A quicker way out — the opening is shorter and snappier for every class, slow swingers included.

• Mazzy fell too — when the square cracks, Hearthold's Sunshine goes down first. Follow her cries through the chasm; Ashmaw has her cornered.
• You're not alone down there — halfway through the fight with Ashmaw, a stranded party of three sellswords crashes in to help. One of them fights just like you, only shinier. Names and classes float over their heads.
• Bring her home — free Mazzy, climb the rope together, and watch Hearthold lose its mind.
• Hire a hand — the sellswords who saved your skin wait at the Tavern. Your first hire is on the house.
• Quillon stops talking over your buttons — his lines, tips and pop-ups in the dungeon now stay clear of your skills, health and map, on every screen size.

• Already playing? You can still fall in — start a new hero with The Fall from the title screen, from New Hero, or from Settings → About. Your other heroes and your town stay exactly as they are.
• New Hero asks how you'd like to begin — start with The Fall (recommended) or skip straight to town with the full creator.
• Watch The Fall — Settings → About replays the fall and the climb back out, just to watch.
• Continue is unchanged — your heroes still go straight to town, no detours.

• A brand-new opening — press Play, pick a hero, and the town square splits open under your feet. You land at the bottom of the chasm with a weapon in your hand and a goblin in your way. Details
• Fight your way out — a hand-built descent beneath Hearthold: diggers in the tunnels, an ember shrine, a chest Quillon swears he didn't plant, and an elite that glows for a reason.
• Meet Ashmaw, Whelp of the Pyre — your first boss is a hound made of house fire. It charges, it slams, it Kindles at half health. It drops your class's unique weapon, ready to swing at level 4.
• Quillon has your back — down there, a blow that would end you becomes a natural twenty. He never fudges the dice. (He fudges the dice.)
• Something at the bottom noticed you — climb the rope back up, tell Hearthold your name, and Bramble Hollow is one tap away.
• A calmer first town — on your first visit it's one goal and one big button; the Menagerie, the Daily Descent and the rest arrive one at a time after your first real dungeon.

Fixes

• The original opening cutscene still plays from Settings → About → Watch the opening.
• Heroes you add later keep the full creator and skip the prologue; anyone arriving on a friend's invite link goes straight to town.

• The Fall — a new first sessionPatch 0.18.0 rebuilds the first ten minutes of The Ember Depths: pick a class, fall into the chasm, fight out, beat Ashmaw and climb back to Hearthold.

• Dungeons run smoother — especially on phones. Crowded fights, boss arenas and busy floors hold their frame rate where they used to stutter. Nothing looks different; it just stops dropping frames.
• Menus open faster and close cleaner — the Bag, the Hero sheet and every building in Hearthold pop open quicker, and the town stays out of the way while a menu is up.
• One renderer for everyone — the GPU renderer switch is gone from Settings. It wasn't helping anyone, and without it the game loads faster with less to download.

Fixes

• Screen shake no longer stutters.
• Menus fade out in one quick motion instead of slow steps.
• The title and hero-select screens are easier on the battery.

• Every hardcore hero owns their economy outright — their own gold, stash, materials, town, sellswords and pets, shared with nobody — not even your other hardcore heroes. A new hardcore hero starts with nothing.
• The grave keeps all of it — when a hardcore hero falls, their whole store is buried with them: the gold, the stash, the town they built. Nothing passes to the next hero. (If you already had hardcore savings, the old shared pool went to your strongest living hardcore hero.)
• Retiring a hardcore hero leaves nothing — their gear no longer lands in a stash nobody can touch; it goes with them, like everything else.

• A goal on the HUD from step one — until a dungeon is cleared, the quest tracker pins the objective itself: *Clear Bramble Hollow · Floor 2/3*. No journal-diving to know what you're doing.
• The Depths get one free pass — your first-ever death in the campaign isn't a death. Brammle hauls you out, you keep everything. Once. The next one counts.
• Loot proves itself early — the first chest you open in Bramble Hollow always hands over a rare weapon made for your class.
• Two skills, not one — level 2 now lands inside the first dungeon, so the hotbar stops looking empty before the first boss.

Fixes

• The Adventure map names the start — a bobbing 'start here' chip on Bramble Hollow for anyone who hasn't cleared it.
• Quillon dangles tomorrow on your first trip back to town — the Daily Descent gets a mention (and its chest) before the session ends.

• The pack grows — an Expand pack button on your Bag sheet buys +4 slots a tier, four tiers deep, for gold and materials. It costs what a real pack should.
• Extra stalls at the Menagerie — the Stable tab's Expand stalls buys +3 stalls a tier, four tiers deep, for gold and Wild Tokens. Past the Menagerie's own 30, that is twelve more beds.
• Everywhere counts — pickups, sellsword swaps, stash trips, trade rooms and quest rewards all respect the new bag size the moment you buy it.

Fixes

• Pet treats reset on a run that counted — a floor cleared or a death. Stepping into a map and straight back out no longer refills the feed counter (or refreshes Wren's shop).
• Quillon waits for a real opinion — the rate-the-game ask and the Settings entry stay quiet until Act III of the campaign is cleared.
• Skill pools are a budget now — Stamina, Spell Points, Cunning, Focus and the like regenerate at half the old rate, and every cast stills that trickle for a breath. Burst, breathe, burst — chaining everything on cooldown runs the bar dry.
• The deep tiers bite again — monster attack and damage were calibrated to a yardstick hero that stopped growing at level 20, so past ~Torment I the extra monster levels only bought them health. Torment foes now hit harder and far more often, and their armour and saves stop short of needing crits (and only crits) to land.

• A full stable no longer loses a find — when the stable and its 3 gate spots are packed, a new pet doesn't become Wild Tokens: it holds as a stray at the gate's edge (up to 6) until you make room.
• Take it in at the Menagerie — the Stable tab lists every stray with a Take in button; release or fuse a pet, or grow the Menagerie, and it's yours. The run's find log marks strays too, so nothing leaves quietly.
• Only the truly countless are set free — a seventh stray past the edge is still released for Wild Tokens, exactly like before.

• The Party sheet lists your pet too — beside the sellswords' tabs sits one for the beast fighting at your side: portrait, health bar, Bond and level, same as theirs.
• Its numbers, in the open — six stat chips like the sellswords': HP, armour, damage as a share of yours, attack speed, crit and damage reduction — with its skills listed below.
• Works with no sellswords hired — a lone wolf and its lone wolf get a sheet all the same.

• The Legend board has edges now — every node has a cap, and when all 525 points are spent the board is complete: Might tops at +50% damage, Onslaught +80% vs elites, Fortune +80% finds. Levels past the cap award nothing.
• Legend XP compounds — each legend level costs 6% more than the last (6000 × 1.06ᴸ) instead of a flat creep. Early levels tick at the same pace; deep levels are the long tail they were meant to be.
• Damage % lines have caps — Damage +150%, Skill damage +200%, Area +100%, vs Elites +150%, and no more than +300% from all of them on a single hit. Shrines, altars and other live buffs still stack on top.
• "of the Magi" rolls bigger — skill damage only helps skills, so it now rolls 8–30% (was 6–20%). A skill build finally prefers it to Savage instead of settling.

Fixes

• Legend points spent past a node's cap now truly give nothing (the engine enforces it, not just the board UI).

• Tab cycles targets, Shift+Tab goes back — the focus lock walks through foes nearest-first, wraps at the end of the pack, same as the controller's R3.
• The map is M alone — Tab belongs to fighting now; M still opens it in dungeons and in town. Both bindings are yours to change in Settings → Keys.
• The Controls card and docs agree — the H card's key list names the cycling keys, and the desktop-controls write-up follows the new defaults.

Fixes

• Secretkeeper and Lidlifter count again — found secrets were filed under the wrong floor, and opened chests never reached the deeds' counters. Chests you'd already opened count straight away.
• A sellsword's cast-off gear can no longer be claimed by another sellsword when it spills onto a full bag — and it says so when it happens, instead of vanishing quietly onto the floor.
• Legend points spent past a node's cap are handed back — old heroes, roster alts and sellswords that went over a cap before the board went finite get the dead points back to spend, and levels past the board's 525-point total settle at the cap.

• The legendary metronome is on your HUD — a small ◆ counter next to your gold ticks toward the pity cap (3,200) while you delve. When it fills, an orange is guaranteed. It also shows on the run summary. Details
• Finales promise their prize — dungeon cards for Grukk's Warcamp and Morvaine's Sanctum now name the guaranteed first-kill reward before you go in. Details
• Leaderboards stay honest — every finished run now sends the Hub a one-line receipt (floors, kills, gold, drops); a doctored or impossible run can't move anyone's counters. Details

Fixes

• The pity counter on the run HUD ticks on every kill that could have rolled an item — the same counter the metronome reads.
• A deep Endless Descent record reached after a finale clear now completes that clear's two-tier reach on the spot — no re-clear needed — and a pet's treasure sense marks secret doors on the minimap.
• Volley (and other aimed area skills) tapped without a target now drop on the densest pack in reach instead of on empty ground at your feet — and they actually rain arrows into a visible circle now.

• Monsters can actually hit you — armor had outrun the world's aim: a well-geared hero was only touched on a perfect roll. Attack bonuses now track a geared hero's armor class, landing about half of ordinary swings instead of one-in-twenty. Details
• Early game stays kind — the pressure ramps from about a third of swings at level 1 to the full target by level 10, so you're not walloped before your subclass arrives. Details
• Telegraphs are the law — slams, charges and meteors are priced in shares of your health (~40–50% on a boss). Stand in the fire and it burns; step out and it whiffs. Positioning beats potions now. Details
• Legendaries mean something again — the drip is retuned so an orange lands every few hours, not every few minutes: thinner base odds, and the pity counter is the metronome that makes dry spells impossible. Details
• Morvaine guards a gift — first kills on her Sanctum now guarantee a free legendary for your class: the campaign's second orange, right where a Day-2 hero reaches it. Details
• Harder modes pay cadence — Hard, Epic and Legendary shorten the legendary pity instead of flooding the floor with loot. Details

Fixes

• World Tiers past Torment I actually scale rarity odds now — the boost table used to clamp flat, so deep tiers paid nothing extra.

• Lethality & the legendary drip, rebuiltHow v0.17.0 rebalanced The Ember Depths: monsters that can hit you, telegraphs priced in health, a legendary cadence of hours not minutes.

• A hero wall, not a form — the class and race steps now show every path in the game: open choices burn bright, locked ones stand as silhouettes with exactly how to earn them. Your first-clear pick marks what it can claim in gold.
• A proper stage — your draft hero stands on an ember-lit plinth under a class-coloured aura, step tabs tick themselves off as you go, and the cards, controls and stats all breathe on a wide screen as well as a phone.
• Every face tells — portraits and figures are bigger, class colours run through the whole screen, and every race and class card shows the actual hero you're about to be.

Fixes

• Large melee weapons rest blade-up at your hero's side now — they used to stand planted tip-down, which read as held upside-down.
• Locked-class descriptions never get clipped — long unlock conditions (Necromancer, Dread Knight, Warlock) wrap in full on the card.
• Leaderboard stats that couldn't have happened — gold with no kills, twenty dungeons on three floors — are rejected server-side instead of polluting the boards.

• Pets ride the world tiers now — above Normal their health grows +8% and their damage +12% per tier, the same multipliers the monsters get. A yardstick that topped out at hero level 20 was leaving them behind on Veteran and beyond.
• Your build still counts — pets keep sharing a piece of your damage reduction and your max-HP advantage, so a tougher hero means a tougher companion too.
• The Heir holds the line — squishier hunters were getting bursted down on deep tiers; their pool now grows with the dangers, so downs should be wounds, not a habit.

• Heals now scale with who you're healing — every healing skill adds a share of the target's max health on top of its dice: Healing Word +6%, Lay on Hands +10%, Preserve Life +5%, Song of Rest and Healing Spores +4%.
• Tanks feel it — the same spell does more for a plate-clad ally than for the wizard behind them, and it keeps pace with deeper dungeons and world tiers where flat healing was falling behind.
• Sellswords too — Brenna and her fellow healers cast through the same formula, so her Healing Word finally does something for a level-20 hero.

• Cleric joins the starters — no more clearing Act I for a healer: forge one from your very first hero (older saves get her too, quietly).
• Brenna Hearthkeeper's in the Tavern — the cleric sellsword open to everyone now, healing hired help from Tavern level 1.
• First clear, free path — clear any one dungeon and claim ANY one locked class at the hero roster, free, once: barbarian, bard, druid, monk, sorcerer, warlock or paladin. The prestige paths still have to be earned.

• Reply to a message — long-press a chat line (or hover its “+” on desktop) and ↩ quotes it: your next post carries a clipped “who said what” tag everyone can tap to jump back to the original.
• @mention anyone — type @ and the box autocompletes handles from the channel, who's online, your friends and your party. @Ada or @Ada-4821 lights up gold, and gets you a ping even while the chat's closed.
• It works where you chat — Global, Trade, LFG, the Arena room and your guild channel all take replies and pings; party chat @s your lobby-mates too.

• Company wanted! — clear your first dungeon with the coin for a contract and the victory screen points you at the Tavern, where a sellsword waits to fight at your side. One button, straight to the hiring board.
• Why hire? — a sellsword levels with you, wears your spare gear and can be told how to fight (their stance is on the party sheet). Down the road they run expeditions for you while you rest.
• Only when it helps — the nudge shows once, only while nobody is hired and your purse can actually afford a contract, and it respects Settings → Tips like every other coach mark.

• Pin a slot, silence the noise — every gear slot on your hero sheet has a little “keep” chip now. Flag a slot and the ▲ upgrade hints stop suggesting replacements for it — your weird-but-perfect weapon stays yours.
• Sellswords too — the party gear grid has the same chip on every slot, so “Upgrades waiting” only lists what actually improves them, not what would bump their favourite piece.
• Only the suggestions quiet down — you can still equip, smith and swap into a kept slot by hand, and an item that upgrades a *different* slot still gets its ▲ — keeping one ring never hides a better second ring.
• Scout the dungeon before you drop — every denizen card now shows what it hits with, what it resists and what it's weak to, and a “Scout report” line tallies the roster's defences — plan your build around fire-friendly and fire-proof floors alike.
• Search your whole bag — the bag and stash search now reads everything an item is: stats, resists, damage types, set names, legendary powers, even the flavour line. “fire”, “lifesteal”, “two-handed”, that one sword's name — all find it.

Fixes

• iPhones and iPads stay on the classic renderer — their brand-new WebGPU drew the world in a little windowed box.
• The GPU renderer is off by default for everyone while its map-centering bug is chased — the switch in Settings → Accessibility → Performance still turns it back on.
• The GPU canvas now picks up your screen's true pixel ratio on zoom and quality changes instead of keeping whatever it started with.
• Big numbers read right again — a million-and-change shows as 6.3M, not 6324K.

• GPU toggle in Settings — Accessibility → Performance now has a “GPU renderer” switch, on by default, kept per device like the other graphics options.
• Turn it off if it ever misbehaves — devices that can't run the new path still fall back on their own; the switch is for the odd machine where the GPU works but looks wrong. `?gpu=0` in the URL does the same thing.
• Behind the scenes, calmer — the new path no longer churns graphics memory on dense floors, and sprite art generates without a pile of canvas warnings. Fewer hitches where it counts.

Fixes

• Firefox now stays on the classic renderer until it grows real WebGPU support — the new path was slower there, not faster.
• Stopped the 'texture destroyed while bound' GPU warnings that could leave the dungeon pure black on some devices.
• Quieter, faster sprite generation — canvases that get read back now say so up front.
• A standing note on the title and hero-select screens explains the new renderer and how to switch it off.

• A new engine under the old floor — dungeon runs now render through your GPU instead of pushing every pixel by hand. Big fights, dense particle storms and busy town scenes hold their framerate where the old path would sag.
• Every light, monster and number the same — this is a renderer swap, not a rebalance: floors, fog of war, torches, telegraphs and floating text are all drawn the same way, just faster.
• Falls back on its own — if your device can't run the new path it quietly returns to the old renderer mid-frame; there's no crash screen and no way to get stuck.
• See something wrong? If a machine still misbehaves, add `?gpu=0` to the game URL — it pins the classic renderer (and remembers the choice until `?gpu=1` brings the new one back).

Fixes

• Damage numbers on the new renderer no longer swap colours mid-fight when a fresh hit pops in.
• Fixed a device-dependent bug where the dungeon could go pure black outside the hero's light on the new renderer.

• Summons inherit your power — skeletons, elementals, wolves, familiars and wardens used to be frozen at the numbers they were summoned with. They now take your weapon's multiplier and your damage bonuses, so every upgrade makes the whole pack stronger.
• They take your armor and accuracy too — a summoned body now wears about 85% of your AC and to-hit instead of a flat line that stopped mattering by the endgame.
• Faster masters, faster minions — half your attack speed and a quarter of your move speed bonus cross over to everything you summon, and half your crit chance gives their strikes real crits instead of lucky twenties.
• Every form, every class — Raise Dead, Bind Elementals, Conjure Animals, Pact Familiar, Spiritual Weapon and the rest all inherit the same way, tanks included.

• Releasing Cinder is final — Wren's gift could come back after you released her, paying out Wild Tokens every time. She's a one-time gift now: release her and she stays in the wild.
• Nobody loses their gift — if Cinder never reached you (say the game closed mid-scene), Wren still hands her over on your next visit to Hearthold.
• Pets you keep are untouched — Cinder, your other pets and your tokens stay exactly as they are.

• Tell Quillon works with ad blockers — some ad blockers mistook parts of the letter for Facebook buttons and hid them, so the title and letter boxes could vanish and you couldn't write anything. They're back for everyone.
• Your letters' replies show again — the same filters could hide the Minder's replies under My letters. Fixed with the same change.
• It stays fixed — the game now checks itself for names ad blockers like to hide, so this can't creep back in.

• Set bonuses, legendary powers and unique powers now count toward Power. Before, Power only added up stats, so a full set or a game-changing legendary barely moved it. Each power is now worth what it actually added in test fights: extra damage, and protection where it gives any.
• The leaderboard follows suit — everyone's Power is recomputed the same way, so it still matches your hero sheet exactly.
• See where it comes from — tap your Power: the breakdown now lists "Legendary & set powers" and "Unique powers" next to your stats, and the ▲ / ▼ on items weighs powers too.
• Monsters don't scale with it — how hard the Depths hit back is still judged on your stats alone, so this changes the number, not the fight.
• Smoother busy fights — spells, ground effects, lights and sparks that are off screen are no longer drawn.

• Tiers open from the campaign only — beating the Act V finale on your highest world tier opens the next one. Every Endless Descent floor used to re-check this, so some accounts climbed several tiers in one Descent run. That's fixed.
• The Descent card tells you where you stand — under Endless Descent on the Adventure map: which finale opens your next tier, the depth that makes that clear open two tiers at once, and your best depth so far.
• A heads-up in the Depths — reach that depth on a Descent run and you're told your next finale clear now opens two tiers. Tiers you've already earned stay yours.

• Gear for the whole party — about a third of what drops is now rolled for one of your sellswords' classes, on every kind of loot: ordinary drops, chests and caches, boss epics, set pieces, legendaries, mythics and uniques.
• Even when they stay home — on a solo run, your hired sellswords still count, so a ranger on the roster keeps turning up bows and quivers.
• Your guarantees stay yours — act-finale set pieces, first-clear rewards and the legendary safety net are always for your own class, and your unique pity is untouched.

• Attack button — prefer to pick your fights? Switch to the attack button in Settings → Gameplay → Touch controls: a big sword button joins your skills. Hold it to keep attacking the foe in front of you (or the one you've focused), tap it for a single swing. Auto-attack is still the default.
• Tap to move, or not — turn off tap to move and a stray tap on the floor never walks you anywhere: the joystick moves you, and tapping loot, doors and stairs still takes you there.
• Left-handed layout — the joystick goes on the right and your skills on the left.
• Skill aiming — *Smart* (as before: tap to auto-target, drag to aim), *Auto* (always targets for you) or *Always aim* (every skill shows its aim first; a quick tap fires where you last aimed).
• Make it fit your hands — a fixed joystick option, and button size (S / M / L) and opacity for your skill buttons. New players pick Auto-attack or Attack button when they make a hero; everyone else is asked once in town.

Fixes

• Pets: each pet's sheet now has an Ascension rite checklist showing exactly what it takes (level 30, Bond 4, a level-4 Menagerie, gold, materials and Wild Tokens), what you have and where to get each one, with a button that lights up when it's ready.
• The Menagerie now labels your Wild Tokens (earned by releasing or fusing pets) — tap them to see what they're for.
• Wager cash-out: the chest's loot now bursts a few steps away from the stairs instead of on them, so picking it up never takes you down the stairs by accident.
• Hearthold: the Menagerie no longer overlaps Vhoruun's Effigy (the barn's paddock is shorter and the two stand side by side).
• Fewer pet pop-ups: the full card now only appears for a new kind of companion. Duplicates, eggs, evolutions and ascensions show a short message instead, so there's nothing to click away.
• The pet sheet has a single Ascend button now, inside the Ascension rite checklist.

• Pets for everyone, right away — you no longer have to beat Morvaine in Act II. On your next visit to Hearthold, Wren Tallowmere opens the Menagerie and Cinder the hearth hound comes home with you, whatever your level.
• The whole Menagerie — catch strays, hatch eggs and raise pets from your first dungeon: they fight beside you, grow, evolve and learn their big trick.
• Already have pets? Nothing changes for you: your pets, eggs and Menagerie stay exactly as they are.

• Update your rating — Menu → Rate the game now shows the rating you gave and lets you change the stars and your words whenever you like (once every 10 minutes). If the game's grown on you, or let you down, tell me.
• Reopen a letter — if something I marked as fixed isn't, open *My letters* in Tell Quillon and press Reopen on it. Tell me what's still wrong and it goes straight back on my desk.
• Updates reach the right letter — changing a rating that came with words adds your new verdict to that same letter, so the whole story stays in one place.

• New Accessibility tab — Settings → Accessibility gathers everything for comfort and safety: Reduce flashing, Reduce motion, Visual effects (Full / Reduced / Minimal), larger attack warnings, rarity letters on items, plus damage numbers, screen shake, high-contrast text and text size.
• Photosensitivity safety — the game now never flashes more than 3 times a second over a large area, for everyone. Turn on Reduce flashing and full-screen flashes are gone entirely, lightning fades instead of strobing and hits show as an outline. New players are asked once before their first dungeon.
• Smoother on phones — menus no longer blur the town behind them, the town stops drawing while a menu covers it, and high-resolution screens render far less. Opening your bag or a building is now light work even on busy phones.
• Graphics: Auto / High / Low — on Auto the game watches your frame rate and quietly lowers resolution and effects if it drops, then steps back up. Low is the fastest. Turn on *Show frame rate* to see it.

Fixes

• Bug reports and feedback now include your frame rate, so performance problems can be tracked down.

• Click to move finds its way — clicking around a corner, through a doorway or past a pillar now walks you around the walls instead of into them. Loot, chests and stairs behind obstacles too, and in Action controls your hero chases a foe around corners. Unreachable spots take you as close as they can.
• Pick how you play — one clear choice, *How do you want to play?*, with four styles: Classic, Classic · keyboard, Action and Action · WASD, each with what moves you and what attacks. In hero creation, Settings → Desktop controls, the in-dungeon controls card (H) and How to Play's new *Movement & controls* page.
• Every stat explains itself — hover or tap any stat on items and your Hero sheet to see what it does and what it means for you right now: "vs a typical level-12 foe you hit 90% of the time", "fire hits deal 65% less", "your CON is worth 180 of your 431 HP".
• Power, explained — tap your Power to see how it's made: Offence (damage per second) and Defence (effective health) with what each is built from, and how you compare to a typical hero of your level.
• Upgrades say why — item compares now spell it out: "+27% damage · +8% health → ▲ Power".

Fixes

• In Action controls, chasing a foe that steps out of sight now keeps going for 3 seconds instead of giving up after 1.

• Look before you pay — tapping an affix line at the Smithy only selects it: you see its cost and an Enchant this line button, and nothing is spent until you press it.
• Select, then confirm — tapping one of the four cards only highlights it; Confirm applies it, with a line telling you exactly what will change. *Decide later* keeps your options waiting.
• Keeping is free and keeps you free — if you keep your current affix, the item stays unlocked and you can enchant any line next. Only taking a new affix makes that line the item's enchanted line, and the confirm tells you before it happens. Thanks for the feedback, Rakkien!

• The whole game on a controller — the title screen, character creation, Hearthold and every menu now work on the pad: the D-pad moves a gold ring, A selects, B goes back, LB / RB switch tabs (or hop between buildings in town), the triggers page long lists and the right stick scrolls or looks around. Press View for the controller card.
• Bag and stash on the pad — move cell by cell with the item's card following you; Y equips, X sends an item across to the stash (or sells it at the Merchant), and skills go on your bar with A on the skill, then A on the slot.
• Turn off click to move — Settings → Desktop controls → *Click to move*. Off, you move with W A S D only and the left mouse button always attacks: at a foe, or toward the cursor where you stand. No more Shift to hold your ground, and a click never walks you into a pack. Loot, doors and stairs still answer a click.
• True Power on the leaderboard — the Power board now shows exactly the Power on your hero sheet. It used to stop at 288K for top heroes; now the server works out each hero's Power the same way the game does, so the biggest builds finally show their real number.
• Inspect is accurate — inspecting another hero now shows their full Legend board, off-hand weapons and exact affix values, so their Power matches what they see.

Fixes

• A quick click on loot, a prop or the floor (Action controls) now walks you all the way there, instead of a single step.

• Choose, don't gamble — enchanting at the Smithy now shows four cards: the affix you have and three new options, each with its range and what it does to your Power. Pick the one you want, or keep what you had for free.
• Three real choices — the options always come from different families (offense, defence, resistances, utility, attributes): never three resistances, never the same stat twice, never one already on the item. At least one fits your class when the item can roll it.
• One line per item — once you enchant a line, that line is the item's enchant from then on (it gets a ✦); the other lines are locked. The cost climbs with each enchant on the same item, and it remembers between sessions.
• No re-rolling the choice — close the window or reload and the same three options are waiting for you under *Choose your enchant*. Works for your sellswords' gear too, and on a unique's ◇ line.

Fixes

• Trading an item upgraded past +5 no longer drops it back to +5 on arrival.

• World tiers open through the campaign — beat the Act V finale on your highest world tier to open the next one. Each tier is a fresh climb through all five acts, harder and richer than the last.
• The Descent still pays off — if your Endless Descent record is deep enough, that same finale clear opens two tiers at once. Two is the most a single clear can open, and the Descent on its own no longer opens tiers.
• Nothing taken away — every world tier you've already earned stays yours. The Effigy, How to Play and the website all show the new requirements.

Fixes

• Loremasters (our community helpers) now play the game like everyone else: only the testers get every dungeon, tier, race, class and building opened for testing. Anything a Loremaster had earned is kept.

• Controller support — plug in (or pair) an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch Pro controller and press a button: dungeons, the Endless Descent, the rites, the Training Grounds, the arena and co-op all play on the pad.
• The layout — left stick moves, right stick aims your skills (let go and they target for you), A attacks, X / Y / B and the bumpers and right trigger are skills 1–6, left trigger drinks a potion, the D-pad handles your pet, the map and quests, and R3 cycles targets.
• Menus by pad — the pause menu, level-ups, death and results screens, Match found and dialogs all work with the D-pad: A to choose, B to go back.
• Your buttons — the HUD shows Xbox or PlayStation buttons while you're on the pad and switches back the moment you touch the keyboard. Rebind any button in Settings → Key bindings → Controller, with stick deadzone and rumble settings too.
• Still to come — town menus (bag, stash, smithy) are next; for now they're mouse or touch.

• Auto-salvage — turn it on in Settings → Loot, pick a rarity (Common to Epic), and anything you pick up at or below it turns straight into materials, with a little *+2 scrap* where it landed. Your bag stays for the good stuff.
• It keeps what matters — upgrades for your hero are kept (on by default), and you can also keep anything your heroes or sellswords could wear. Legendaries and better, uniques, set pieces, locked and upgraded (+N) items and quest items are never touched.
• Clean up in one tap — an *Auto-salvage* button in the bag and the Smithy runs the same rule over what you're carrying, and shows exactly what you'll get first.
• Nothing lost — every salvaged item's look still goes into your Wardrobe, yields are exactly the same as salvaging at the Smithy, and the run summary tells you what it saved you.

• Key bindings — Settings has a new Key bindings tab: click any action and press the key you want. Movement, all six skills, the potion, your pet, the map, bag, hero, party, quests and more, in both Classic and Action controls.
• Two keys each, and your mouse buttons — every action has a main and a second key, and skills, the potion and panels can go on the right or middle mouse button or the side buttons (Mouse 4 / Mouse 5). Skills take Shift / Ctrl / Alt combos too.
• No accidents — if a key's already taken it offers to swap them, browser shortcuts like Ctrl+W are refused, each row has its own reset (plus Reset all), and Esc always opens the menu.
• Any keyboard — movement stays where WASD sits on your keyboard (Z Q S D on AZERTY), while letter shortcuts like M for the map follow the letter printed on your keys.
• Your keys everywhere — the skill bar, tooltips, the controls card (H, now with a *Change keys…* button), the key hints and tips all show the keys you picked. Press H in a dungeon to see them all.

Fixes

• Guildmates can message each other without being friends: tap them in the guild roster and choose Message, or pick them under *Message a guildmate* in DMs.

• Abandon from the map — tap a quest in Adventure and there's an Abandon button right on its card, next to Pin. Thanks for the idea, Rakkien!
• Nothing lost by mistake — it asks first. Board contracts are gone for good, but story and questline steps just go back to Chains to pick up again. Mid-dungeon there's no Abandon, so an escort or a defence can't vanish under you.
• Arrow traps, every way — wall launchers that point up the screen now really fire: their arrows used to hit their own wall and vanish. Watch your step. Thanks for the report, TheSant!

Fixes

• Direct messages in the town chat box look right again: the conversation header, the messages and the Message / Send row stack properly instead of squeezing side by side, and every chat's input row sits on one line again.
• The "Update ready" notice in a dungeon no longer sits on top of your skill bar: it's under the top of the screen now (on phones, a single line under the minimap).

• Match found, clearly — the town prompt is a solid card now, and in a dungeon it's a compact bar that sits clear of your buttons, chat and minimap.
• Strangers stay strangers — fighting someone you met through a card or Quick fight no longer adds them as a friend. Add them yourself if you'd like a rematch. Parties work as before.
• Out of the way — the search pill steps below toasts and banners instead of hiding under them.

• Arena chat — a new chat channel for PvP: talk fights, builds and rematches, in Social → Chat, the town chat box and the 💬 drawer.
• Fight cards — tap *Post a card* in the Arena to say you're up for a Duel, 2v2 or free-for-all. Your card shows your hero, level and rating in Arena chat and the Arena, and anyone can tap ⚔ Fight to take you on: no codes, no friending first.
• Quick fight — pick a mode and hit Find match, then carry on playing. A small pill counts your wait, and when someone's found you get a *Match found* prompt: accept and you're both in the lobby, ready, and it starts by itself. Searches start near your rating and widen if it's quiet; quick fights always use normalised stats, so it's skill that counts.
• Bring a friend — a party of two can queue or post for 2v2 together and stays on the same team.
• Fight from anywhere — you can search from a dungeon (accepting leaves the floor), or tick *Only match me in town*. After a match, Find another puts you straight back in the queue.
• Fair play — blocked players never meet, hardcore heroes only fight hardcore heroes, cards carry a pick-list of taunts rather than free text, and turning down two matches in ten minutes pauses your search for two minutes.

• Map opacity — the big map (M, Tab or tap the minimap) has an Opacity slider. Turn it down and the dungeon shows through, so you can keep it up while you explore.
• Play with the map open — below 100% you keep moving and fighting under it: WASD, the joystick, clicks and skills all reach the game. Close it with M, Tab, Esc or ✕.
• Set it once — your choice is saved, and it's also in Settings → Display. At 100% the map works just as before.

Fixes

• Phones: tapping ✕ on the big map no longer opens the pause menu underneath.
• The map's Opacity slider moves by dragging only: the arrow keys always walk your hero, even right after you've used it.

• Action controls on keyboard and mouse — turn off auto-attack and fight with your mouse: click a foe to attack it, hold the button to keep swinging (it sticks to your target even if the mouse drifts), and when it falls you move straight on to the next one by your cursor.
• Stand your ground — Shift + click attacks in place toward the cursor. Bows, wands and staffs fire where you point, even with nothing there.
• Right-click a skill — the right mouse button casts one of your skills at the cursor (skill 1 to start; pick any slot in Settings). Hold it, or hold a number key, to recast the moment it's ready.
• You can see what you'll hit — foes under the cursor get an outline and a name plate, and the cursor turns into a sword over foes, a hand over loot and props, and stairs over the way down. Press H in a dungeon for every key.
• Your choice, any time — new heroes pick Classic (auto-attack) or Action on a new Controls step before Difficulty; if you already play on a computer, Hearthold will ask you once. Switch any time in Settings → Gameplay. Both deal exactly the same damage, and phones and tablets stay just as they are.

• Bigger tabs — every stash tab now holds 80 items instead of 50, so the stash you already have got a lot roomier.
• Three more Stash levels — upgrade the Stash building to level 8 for up to 8 tabs (640 slots).
• Name your tabs — tap ✎ Rename and call a tab whatever you like ("Sets", "For the wizard", "Sell later"), and move tabs left or right to put them in your order.
• Put it where you want it — items you stash go into the tab you have open, and Stash all fills that tab first. A stashed item's card has buttons to send it to any other tab.
• Quick moves — Shift+click an item to send it straight across between bag and stash. On a phone, turn on Quick move and a single tap does the same.

Fixes

• Set pieces: the card now lights up every piece of the set that hero is wearing and ticks (✓) the bonuses that are active — and when you hover gear while inspecting another player (or one of your sellswords), it counts THEIR pieces, not yours.

• Stash all / Take all — the Stash has a button above each side: move your whole bag into the stash, or the open stash tab into your bag, in one tap.
• Move just what you're looking for — search or filter first and the buttons move only what's shown ("Stash 7 shown"): all your rares, every helmet, everything matching a name.
• No surprises when it's full — a move stops when the bag or stash runs out of room and tells you how many went across.
• The Wardens in the credits — the credits now honour our Wardens, the testers who keep the Depths in order: each by name, with a portrait of their highest-level hero in the look they chose.

Fixes

• Rescue quests: the captive you escort is much sturdier — twice the health, they hang back out of the melee, foes go for your party first, and they catch their breath between fights.

• Robes, finally — the Apprentice Robe, Scholar's Robe, Robes of the Sage and Archmage Raiment now show on your hero and in your portrait, each in its own cloth and trim (the Archmage's is sewn with stars). Before, every robe left you in your class clothes.
• Every armour looks like itself — padded is quilted, studded leather has studs, brigandine is red cloth and rivets, hide has a fur collar, and chain, scale, splint, ring mail, breastplates and plate each have their own pattern instead of sharing three looks.
• Gloves, boots and cloaks too — wraps, runed and adamant gauntlets; moccasins, galeweave striders with a feather and dragonbone sabatons; and cloaks in their own colours (a ragged worn cloak, ranger green, the misty shroud, scaled dragonhide) with rarity on the edge.
• Off-hands and weapons — the Buckler is a small steel dish, the Storm Prism glows ice-blue beside the violet Arcane Orb, the Grim Tome is bone-white and the Pact Grimoire violet. Weapons now show their quality in the metal, so a mithril sword looks like one. Details

Fixes

• Guild leaders and officers now see waiting applications as a number on the Guild tab and the Social button, not just on the Roster.
• Edit guild: the banner preview now shows your guild's banner exactly as it flies, including the gilded edge and crown from guild levels.

• New look! — when a pickup in the Depths adds a look to your wardrobe, a small ✦ New look note shows at the top of the screen for a moment. Several at once become one note. Details
• The Wardrobe tab marks what's new — a ! on the tab until you've looked, and a small dot on each new look and on the slots that have one.
• No noise for what you had — your starting gear and everything you owned before the Wardrobe arrived don't count as new.

• Wardrobe — every helmet, armour, weapon and off-hand you pick up adds its look to your collection. Wear any look your class could use over your real gear from the new Wardrobe tab on the Hero sheet. It's free, any time. Details
• Looks only — your stats, unique powers and legendary effects always come from what you actually wear; the look just changes how you're drawn, on your hero, in your portrait and to everyone you play with. Details
• Your collection starts full — everything you already own counts: your bag, stash, every hero's gear and loadouts and your sellswords' kit. Quality and rarity count separately, so a mithril helm and an iron one are two looks to find.

• The Wardrobe: wear any look you've foundHow the Wardrobe works in The Ember Depths v0.14.0: how looks are collected, which ones your hero can wear over their gear, and what stays the same.

• Every helmet has its own look — the Traveler's Hood, Leather Cap, Circlet of Focus, Scale Coif, Iron Helm, Greathelm and Dragonbone Crown now each look different on your hero and in your portrait, instead of sharing three shapes. Better quality still changes the metal, and rarity adds trim, gems and plumes.
• Circlets and crowns show your hair — a Circlet of Focus is a thin band with a gem; the Dragonbone Crown is a ring of ivory horns over your hair.
• Hide your helmet any time — the Hero sheet has a Hide helmet switch under your head slot. You keep the helmet's stats; everyone else sees your bare head too.

• Edit your messages — fix a typo in Global, Trade, LFG, Guild chat or a DM for 15 minutes after you send it. Tap ✎ (long-press a message on touch screens, or hover it with a mouse), or press ↑ in an empty chat box to edit your last line; Esc cancels.
• Everyone sees the change — the new words replace the old for everyone reading, marked (edited). Edits follow the same chat rules as new messages.
• Removed means removed — a message a moderator takes down now disappears from open chat windows straight away.

• Secret rooms always show up for your quest — while a quest needs a hidden room, every floor of its dungeon has one, cave layouts included. Who Took the Ledger? in the Rat-Kicker Tunnels can be finished again, and so can secret hunts in Bramble Hollow, Serpent's Hollow and Gutrot's Wallow.
• Updates on your terms — when a new version is out, town shows an Update ready button instead of reloading on you. Head into a dungeon and the update slips in as the first floor loads, picking up right where you stand.
• What's New, pocket-sized — after an update inside a dungeon, a small card shows what changed, with Full notes if you want the rest.

• Ascend and Merge for sellswords — the Smithy's ✦ Ascend · Merge tab has the same Whose gear row as Upgrade and Enchant: pick a sellsword to reforge the uniques they wear. A sellsword's unique ascends to their level, so it never out-levels them.
• Enchant for sellswords — reroll an affix on anything a sellsword wears from the Enchant tab (Smithy level 3), the same way as your own gear.
• Desktop chat, easier to read — the town chat moved to the top-left corner, just right of the menu, with its tabs on top. The tabs are solid, recent lines sit on a soft backdrop instead of vanishing into the scenery, and hovering the tabs drops the full box down.

• Chat on desktop — in Hearthold, chat now sits in the bottom-left corner of the town, MMO style: channel tabs with their own unread counts, new lines that show for a moment and fade, Enter to talk and Esc to get back to the town. Hover to bring it up, or tuck it away to just the tabs. Phones and dungeons keep the 💬 button.
• Sellswords at the Smithy — upgrade and enchant the gear your sellswords wear, just like your own: pick them under Whose gear on the Smithy's Upgrade or Enchant tab, or tap Upgrade … at the Smithy on their Gear tab.
• A company of six — you can keep up to 6 sellswords on your books. If you had more, the six strongest stay and everyone else's gear is waiting in your stash.

Fixes

• Desktop town: the menu buttons work again (the new chat box was swallowing clicks), and recent chat lines now stay visible in the corner instead of hiding until you hover.
• New messages in Party, Guild, Trade and LFG chat now all count on the Social button, the Chat tab and the 💬 chat button, and the count goes down as you read each channel. Global chat is busier, so it just lights a small dot. Every chat tab shows its own unread number.

• Accessibility settings — Settings → Display → Accessibility has three new options for easier reading.
• Clean font — swap the pixel lettering for Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface designed for readers with low vision: menus, the HUD, item cards and chat all switch. Signs and numbers drawn in the world stay pixel.
• Text size — Normal, Large or Larger: makes text bigger without changing the size of anything else, on top of the Game & HUD and Menu size options. Works with either font.
• High-contrast text — brightens the dim grey secondary text (descriptions, notes, labels) so it stands out against the dark panels.

• Bulk exchange at the Smithy — the Exchange tab has ×1 / ×10 / ×100 buttons: pick one and every trade on the ladder goes ten or a hundred at a time, up or down. Compendium
• The buttons show the whole batch — 80 Iron Scrap → 10 Arcane Essence at ×10 — so you see exactly what you give and get before you tap.
• A batch goes through whole or not at all: if you're short, the button stays greyed out and nothing is spent. Same Smithy rates as before.

Fixes

• The Exchange tab is laid out as a ladder: each material gets its own row with its icon, colour and how many you own, plus clear Break down / Refine buttons that show what you give and get — anything you can't afford is in red.

• Renown — what every run earns for your guild's week is now called renown. The numbers haven't changed: the same floors, dungeons, elites, bosses, arena wins and new Descent depths count. Details
• The Guild Coffer — the weekly chests (Copper to Crown) are your guild's now, and the guild view's first tab is called Coffer. Details
• Banner Blessings — officers raise blessings over the guild's banner with seals. Same five blessings, same strength; the gold one is now *The Guild Purse*. Details
• Standing follows the old guild ladder — Apprentice, Journeyman, Adept, Master, then Ember-Sworn. Your points carry over, so you keep your rank. Compendium
• Guild news, writs, the Hall and the guide all speak of your guild and your guildmates now, and a level-25 guild is an Ember-Sworn Guild.

Fixes

• The website's Hall of Heroes shows its live numbers and boards again (it went blank as soon as the Hero power board had anyone on it).

• The Party sheet is now tabbed — each sellsword's page keeps their portrait, health, the six numbers and the party switch pinned at the top, with Gear, Skills, Legend and Orders tabs below. No more scrolling to the bottom to find something.
• Tabs tell you where to look — Gear shows a green ▲ when your bag has upgrades for them, Legend a gold +N when they have points to spend, and Orders a red ! when their potion pouch is empty.
• Legend, front and centre — their Legend board has its own tab. Before level 20 it shows the paths dimmed, so you can see what they'll grow into.
• Tap through the whole party — the tab you have open stays open when you switch sellsword, so you can spend everyone's Legend points or fill everyone's pouch one after another.
• Orders puts stance (with what each one does) and the pouch together. In a dungeon a This run tab shows their kills, damage, times downed and what they picked up.

• Medium has teeth again — recent gear and power upgrades had left most of the campaign a stroll (about one death in eight attempts, almost none at level 20). Foes are retuned dungeon by dungeon so every act asks something of you again, with Act I still gentle at the start. Details
• Level 20 no longer switches the game off — once you hit the cap, Act V's last dungeons barely scratched anyone. Foes there now meet a level-20 hero head-on.
• World Tiers start fair — Veteran and up already force Hard, so they no longer also pile on extra monster strength: a fresh level-20 hero meets the next tier at about late-campaign Hard and grows into it with the new loot.
• Not a scratch on you? Clear three dungeons in a row without dropping below half health and Vhoruun's Effigy will tell you what the next difficulty pays. Harder modes give more XP, gold and magic find.
• Bards hit like they sing — new *Performer's Flourish*: finesse blades strike with Charisma when it's your best stat. Magical Secrets also brings damage, damage reduction and health, so bards hold up in the late acts.
• Summoners stand on their own feet — Raise Dead, Pact Familiar and Conjure Animals now last a little less than their cooldown, so there's a gap to cover between casts instead of a wall of minions that never falls.
• Gnome Cunning adds 4% faster cooldowns and +2% dodge, so gnomes keep up with the other races in every class.

Fixes

• The sim's ranged heroes no longer get stuck kiting a sleeping monster around a corner (that was also hiding how often they died).

• Balance pass: every act, every classHow The Ember Depths was rebalanced in v0.13.1: death rates per act and class before and after, the level-20 fix, fairer World Tiers and the Effigy's nudge.

• Muster — every floor, dungeon, elite, boss, arena win and new Descent depth now musters points for your guild's week. Your share shows on the roster with a gold ★ once you've pulled your weight. Details
• The Company Coffer — five chests from Copper to Crown open every Monday at whatever tier your company reached. Everyone who mustered claims gold, materials and items, with a bonus roll for a full share. Targets scale with active members, so small companies get the same chests as big ones. Details
• Writs — townsfolk post contracts on the company board: cull champions, map the deep, fell tyrants. Hold up to three; taking one takes it off the board for everyone. Finish it for gold, muster and guild XP. Details
• Company Boons — officers spend seals to light boons for the whole company until Monday: more gold, magic find, hero XP, move speed or potion healing. More slots and double-strength boons come with guild levels. Details
• Guild levels mean something — new banner fields at level 3, new charges at 10, more writs, more boon slots, a gilded banner at 20 and a crown at 25. Young companies level twice as fast. Compendium
• Standing — your lifetime muster, from Hearthkin to Ember-Sworn. It follows you if you change guilds.
• The Guild Hall has new tabs: Company, Writs, Roster and Hall.

Fixes

• Text on phones held sideways reads properly again: iPhone Safari was blowing some lines up to giant size (the Players list, chat and rosters), spilling them past their rows and cutting them off.

• Guild renown, the Coffer, writs and Banner BlessingsHow guilds work in The Ember Depths: weekly renown from every run, the five-chest Guild Coffer, writs on the notice board, Banner Blessings and Standing.

• Every menu, re-forged in HD pixel art — panels, cards, buttons and dialogs now wear the same hand-built frames as the town dock: lit stone bevels, a gilt inlay, gold corner brackets and rivets, all drawn one fine pixel at a time instead of fat blocky borders.
• Buttons you can feel — every button has a proper bevel, a glint of torchlight on its corner and a lip it sinks onto when you press it. Ember for the big moves, gold for buying, blood-red for anything you can't take back.
• Sharper everywhere — item slots glow up from the floor in their rarity's colour, tabs wear a gilded cap when open, section headings sit on a gold rule, and stat boxes, chips, bars and toggles all get the crisp one-pixel edge.
• Dialogs that step forward — the town softly blurs and darkens behind any dialog, and every sheet carries an ember crown on its frame.
• The pause menu matches — Resume, Return to Town and the Bag / Hero / Party tiles in the dungeon now use the same frames and buttons as Hearthold.
• On a desktop the frames scale up to the same chunky-crisp pixels as the dock; on phones they stay fine and sharp.

Fixes

• Button labels always fit their buttons now — on the item card, the pause menu's tiles, tabs and chips a long label wraps onto a second line instead of spilling past the frame or getting cut with “…”.
• Pet names in the Menagerie and Codex wrap instead of being cut short, and a sellsword's skill cards show their hotbar number on the card again (it had drifted off it).
• Every Menu entry has its own icon now — a primer for How to Play, a sealed scroll for the Quest Journal, a herald's bell for What's New, a heart for Rate the game, a quill for Tell Quillon and a laurel for Credits — instead of four books and three stars.

• Dual wield — Fighters learn Two-Weapon Fighting at level 1, Rogues Ambidexterity at 3 and Barbarians Twin Fury at 3: a one-handed melee weapon in your off-hand strikes once per attack at a share of its damage (50/40/35%), and later features sharpen it (65/55/50%).
• Off-hands mind the main-hand — a quiver only rides with a bow or crossbow: put a sword on and the quiver goes back to your bag, and a bladeless hand can't hold one.
• Two hands, two rules: never a second bow, crossbow or cast — and only one-handed melee pairs. Equip compares both hands like rings now, so the ▲ arrow picks the better placement.

Fixes

• The off-hand slot is honest about pairings everywhere: equipping, hiring sellswords, loadouts, old saves and the compare card all apply the same rules, and anything displaced lands back in your bag — never lost.

• Founding a guild works: the game was quietly ignoring the Hall's replies, so a charter looked like it never answered. Your new guild now appears the moment you found it.
• Guild invites, the notice board, applications and guild news all come through now too.
• Names are no longer refused for no reason: handles, guild names and tags, and new hero names were being turned down whenever the Minder checked them, even perfectly clean ones. Only names it actually flags are refused now.
• Tried to found a guild and saw “the Hall didn't answer”? It may have gone through after all: open Social → Guild to see it.
• Recruit from their card — open a player's card and, if you lead a guild or hold its officership, an invite button is right there. Their guild tag shows on the card too, so you know who's spoken for.

Fixes

• Power finally explains itself: the hero sheet tooltip and the compendium's stats page now say what the number is — a summary score (√ of your attack DPS × effective HP, ×10) for comparing builds, not a stat anything rolls.
• Power scores grew eyes: Skill, Area and Elite damage, cooldown reduction, dodge, resistances, and life on hit / lifesteal / regen all count now — the ▲ upgrade arrows and the leaderboard read builds that fight smarter, not just raw DPS and HP.

• Veteran and every tier beyond — the second World Tier no longer takes Easy or Medium: the Effigy only burns Hard, Epic or Legendary there. Compendium
• The Effigy moves itself up — pick a tier past Normal on an easy fire and your difficulty rises to Hard on its own, with the dial's easy tiles dark until you come back to Normal.
• It's written where it matters — the tier card at Vhoruun's Effigy and the compendium's World Tiers page both spell out the rule, so the lift never surprises you. Compendium

Fixes

• Lists of players — Players, Friends, requests, the guild roster, applicants, invites and the invite picker — now sort by who was active most recently instead of level or join date.
• Guilds work for real now: the online server was missing the wiring that turns your clicks into charters — founding, the notice board, invites and guild chat were silently dropped, and the same gap stalled chat and stat reports.
• Founding a guild answers back even when the server can't: if the Hall never replies, you're told nothing was paid instead of watching a button do nothing.
• The banner designer's pickers now show which cloth, trim, pattern and emblem you actually picked.
• Staff renames can set a chosen handle now — any free and clean name — instead of only resetting to an automatic one; it applies at once and the player is told the new name.
• The Players list reads smaller on a phone: rows, portraits, names and the search bar compact in landscape so more than a couple of players fit the screen at once.

• Found a guild — the Guild Hall is a guildhall now: pick a name and tag, design your banner (cloth, trim, pattern, emblem — 480 ways to fly it), write the blurb, and pay the charter. Officers invite by handle, set the message of the day and mind the roster; the leader names officers. Compendium
• The notice board — guilds that take applications post themselves: search them, read the blurb, and apply with a line for the officers. Found a guild or join one, no begging in global required.
• Your own channel, your own tag — every guild gets a chat channel only guildmates see, in the Social sheet and the chat drawer, and your tag sits before your name everywhere you speak.
• Guilds level up — kills, floors, bosses and Descent depth from every member feed the guild's XP, all the way to level 25. Buffs, perks and guild raids arrive with the Hall's next upgrades.
• Fourteen paths of Legend — the Legend board doubles: offense joins might, finesse, destruction, onslaught and sorcery; defense adds bulwark, warding and endurance; sustain brings leeching and renewal; arcana, fortune and swiftness keep utility. Grouped, with your live totals on every node. Compendium
• Rebirth is gone — nobody ever took the rite, so we've retired it: no more resets, no Renown, no boons. Prestige classes now stand on their own unlocks (depth 25 for the Necromancer, a Torment tier for the Dread Knight), and gear you earned at the cap stays wearable forever.

Fixes

• Player profiles and public boards no longer report a Rebirths count.
• Lists of players — Players, Friends, requests, the guild roster, applicants, invites and the invite picker — now sort by who was active most recently instead of level or join date.

• No more shared podium — leaderboards never tie: every row earns its own number, in town and on emberdepths.io. Stat boards go to whoever reached the score first; Arena ties fall to more wins; Hardcore walls order by the run that mattered. Leaderboards
• Power settles it — the Hero power board breaks ties on level, then Legend level, and shows both right under each score, so you can see exactly why a rival sits above you.
• Honest counts — boards and the adventurers tally now count the same people: nameless ghosts no longer take rank spots, and hardcore-only adventurers stop leaving a phantom level-1 row on the softcore board.

Fixes

• The Ranks tab now leads with one main board: Hero power folds the old Highest level and Legend boards in — your level and Legend level still show under every score.

• Loadouts — at level 20 your Hero sheet's Gear tab gains a second equipment set: tap I or II to swap the whole kit, in town or mid-dungeon. The stowed set waits exactly as you left it. Compendium
• No bag juggling — gear moves straight between the two sets, so a full pack never blocks a swap, and an attuned unique keeps its chosen powers when it comes back on.
• Reforge mid-fight — stats apply the instant you swap: shield up for the climb, warhammer out for the boss.

Fixes

• Sellsword equip buttons now say *why* a piece won't fit — "Needs level 14" or "can't use" — instead of vanishing or silently greying out. Level-locked gear also shows dimmed on a sellsword's gear tab.
• Bulk sells and salvages can now take ▲ upgrades: a new "▲ upgrades" chip on the Merchant's sell tab, the Bag's salvage row, and the Smithy's sweeps opts them in — off by default, and every confirm says exactly how many upgrades are in the batch.
• The in-run chat drawer no longer blows up on phones — it keeps the compact menu size instead of expanding to desktop text that covered half the screen.

• Pets inherit your toughness — your companion now takes half your damage reduction as its own, and a share (30%) of however far your max HP outgrows the average adventurer's. Gear, traits and Legend Vitality all count — a tanky hero raises a tanky pet.
• Hardened for the deep tiers — pets gain +2% damage reduction per world tier above Normal; monsters hit tier-levels harder, and the old flat DR couldn't keep up.
• Legendary powers stay yours — your procs still don't trigger off pet hits; this is inherited grit, not borrowed magic.

• Companions earn their own Legend — once you pass level 20, every sellsword in your active party learns from the fight: 35% of your Legend XP flows into their own board, and each level is a point to spend. Hire a veteran, raise a legend.
• Their skills, your call — sellswords still pick their own bar, but the Party sheet now lets you override it: tap a skill, tap a slot. The Temple's Rite of the Hireling unmakes a sellsword's picks for gold — their bar back to their own choices, every Legend point refunded.
• Five paths for the hired blades — Might, Finesse, Vitality, Arcana and Swiftness. Fortune is yours alone — a sellsword's luck doesn't make the loot.

• Bounty items now out-level the dungeon — every quest reward rolls 2 item levels ahead of where you are, and hard contracts go further still: +4 on Hard, +5 on Epic, +6 on Legendary. The board is worth the effort.
• Signature items get the same lead — sellsword questline finales and named rewards arrive ahead of your level too, so a finale's prize is a real upgrade, not a keepsake.
• The next world tier stays the horizon — quest gear can reach your tier's top level but never past it, so tomorrow's prize is still the Effigy's to give.

Fixes

• The Minder now judges the words you actually typed — the profanity masker used to clean a line before the moderation check, which let masked hate speech slip through.

• Dungeon music now rotates — a floor starts on its own theme, then every couple of minutes the score crossfades to the next of our five dungeon pieces and wraps around, so the Depths never sound the same twice in a run.
• A new floor leads with its own theme again, boss fights still cut to the boss score and back, and the arena keeps its own music — plus your co-op party hears the same rotation.
• Each song keeps its own identity — crypt tolls, sewer drips, infernal drums: the crossfade between them is seamless, and every instrument is warmed ahead of time so nothing stutters.
• Level 20 gets a proper welcome — the first time you return to town at the top of the book, a card explains Legend points and the six paths, what the Effigy wants next, and where the endgame goes (Descent depths, uniques, Rebirth). One tap opens the Legend board.
• The Menagerie learned spring cleaning — a new Fuse duplicates button folds every spare companion into its species' strongest in one confirm, sparing anything locked or on duty.
• Set pieces chase you now — legendaries for your class's sets drop nearly twice as often as plain legendaries, bosses' set-piece chance is up to 8%, and every world tier above Normal pays +25% XP on top of the tougher monsters, so Legend levels keep pace with the climb.
• The Temple offers a second rite — the Rite of Recollection hands back every spent Legend point for gold plus a soul per ten, leaving abilities, feats and subclass exactly as you built them. Wrong path? Walk another.

Fixes

• Admins can now rename a hero (not just a handle) from the dashboard — the name is pinned until the hero's own save takes it.
• Fixed a server hiccup where some players' friends list came up empty on connect — your party is back.
• Pinned hero renames now reach the player reliably (the name check could eat the notice before it ever sent).
• Tapping the town around an open building panel (Smithy, Tavern, Vault…) now closes it.
• Your floating nameplate now shows your hero's name like everyone else's — a rename updates it live, even mid-run.

• Feats now scale with your level — the ones that granted a small flat bonus (Hale and Hearty's HP, Parry Master's AC, Ever-Watchful's accuracy, the Adepts' save DC, Spark of Magic's fire damage and resource, Jack of Trades, Bulwark, Warden's Stance) now grant it per level, so a pick at level 4 is still pulling weight at 20.
• Percentage feats were already evergreen — crit, damage, dodge, resist and move-speed feats are untouched; they were scaling all along.
• New leaderboard: Hero power — Social → Ranks (and the website) now ranks the raw power score your character reports. Suit up and climb. Leaderboards

• Exchange tab in the Smithy — trade materials up the ladder: 8 Iron Scrap → 1 Arcane Essence, 8 Essence → 1 Void Crystal, 6 Crystal → 1 Forgotten Soul, 4 Souls → 1 Starshard. Compendium
• Break down too — swap a higher material back for 4/4/3/2 of the rung below it, so a surplus of Souls is never wasted.
• Rates follow the ladder's scarcity — trading costs a cut each way (~half a material's worth on a round trip), so the Exchange smooths out your stockpile without replacing honest salvage.

• Two new leaderboards — Legend level ranks the highest legend level across your softcore heroes, and Rebirths counts how many times you've started the cycle over. Find them in Social → Ranks, right after Level. Leaderboards
• They're on the website too — emberdepths.io/leaderboards has both boards, and player profile lookups show your legend level and rebirth count. Leaderboards
• Global and Friends scope, same rules — the boards track lifetime numbers that only ever go up; nothing you do can knock you off your own record.

• All summoned minions are ~25% stronger across the board — ~25% more health and ~25% more damage, from skeletons and elementals to Spiritual Weapon, Guardian of Faith and the beasts a Ranger calls.
• The little helpers pets raise count too — a Gravecaller's skeletons and every other pet-summoned ally get the same bump.
• Perks, masteries, forms and uniques stack on top — a summon that was already built big just got bigger.

Fixes

• Every quest now pays XP that scales with your level — Wren's Menagerie requests included (a tenth of a level per tier). No more XP-free errands.
• Secret-room and puzzle quests now guarantee what they ask for on every floor of their dungeon — no more scouring a whole delve for a room that never spawned. Every quest card's How-it-works line names the floor you're headed for.
• The live damage meter can no longer lodge itself under the minimap — a position remembered from another layout now always clears the map and quest tracker.
• The in-run Quests view (J) no longer clips its cards at the right edge.
• Letters bound to run hotkeys (W, A, S, D, and friends) now type properly in the Tell Quillon letter box and any other text area — no more fighting the keyboard.
• Every set piece now shows its own emerald green — name, tile, icon and loot toast — wherever it appears, the way legendaries wear orange. (Their sets keep their own colours in the Codex.)
• Hitting a Legend level past 20 no longer flashes "LEVEL 20!" again — the banner now says LEGEND and the real number, in violet.
• Boss music now plays to the last hit of the fight — a second boss or a boss vanishing mid-battle (burrowing, phasing, in co-op) used to drop the score back to the dungeon theme.

• Chat authors always show who they are NOW: name, level, class, race and power under every message update live — scroll back a week and yesterday's poster wears today's hero.
• Levelled up? Switched heroes? Renamed? Every line you've ever posted wears it at once, on every reader's screen.
• What you said stays what you said — only the face beside it updates: texts, item links and reactions are untouched.

Fixes

• Joined players now see the boss bar too — name, title, phase pips and health — when a boss awakens in a friend's run.
• Co-op guests drift less on spotty connections: the game re-sends your movement until the host confirms it, and the host stops a guest's hero sooner when input goes silent.

• Hero names and account handles now pass the same real-time moderation check as chat — a name that trips it is simply refused, with no strike: the harm never lands, so there's nothing to punish.
• A refused hero name keeps your old name (or "Adventurer" if you had none) — you can just try a better one.
• Handle claims show the same "filtered" answer as a local filter hit, with suggested names to pick from.
• Refused names are logged for the Wardens, so someone trying again and again isn't invisible.

Fixes

• The handle picker's availability check now runs the same screening as a claim — it can't call a name "available" when claiming it would be refused.
• Names also go through the local offensive-roots list before the API, so the obvious cases are refused even with moderation unreachable.

• Choose who sees you about: Social → Friends now has a Seen picker — In the open (everyone), Among friends (only friends see you online) or In shadow (you look offline to all).
• In shadow hides your dot and whereabouts — the player directory, profile cards, friend lists and leaderboards all show you as offline, with your last real sighting as the "seen" time.
• Shadow is a look, not a wall: invites, trades and DMs you send or receive keep working, and your words still reach the channels you speak in.
• The choice follows your account, not your device — set it once and it holds on every tab and browser.

• Public chat (Global, Trade, LFG) is now watched by the Minder: a real-time content moderation check scores every line for hate, harassment, threats and the like, on top of the slur and link filters you already know.
• A flagged line is refused and counts a strike — strike one mutes you for an hour, strike two for a day, and strike three bans you for good. A month without a flag wipes the record clean.
• Talk about the game is safe: violence and grim dungeon chat never count. Party chat and DMs keep the old filter only — your private words stay private.
• Banned? You can appeal: the ban banner in chat has an Appeal button that writes a private letter, and the Wardens review it — a successful appeal lifts the ban and clears the strikes.
• If the Minder can't reach his books, chat just keeps working — he's careful, never punitive on a hunch.

• Every quest card now says how it works: in the Journal, on the board, on the Adventure map and in the in-dungeon Quests view, a short line explains what to do and where ("a Ward-Keeper appears beside you on the first floor… keep them alive through 3 waves").
• Ward-Keepers and freed captives show on the minimap as a gold marker, kept on the edge of the map when they're off-screen, so you can always find who you're protecting.
• Fixed: the Ward-Keeper no longer gets overrun before you find them. The waves used to start a few seconds after you arrived, wherever you were, so the keeper often fell unseen. Now they wait a few steps from the entrance (glowing, and untouchable) until you come and stand beside them, then the waves begin.
• Defend quests also say what happens if the keeper falls: the quest stays open and you can try again on your next visit.

• New title theme: the opening screen and hero select now play *Fantasy Choir 2* by César da Rocha, strings and choir, on a loop (with Town music set to Tracks; Classic keeps the old score).
• One quick question when you arrive in Hearthold: chat, direct messages, friends and trading are for players 13 and older, so new adventurers confirm their age once before picking a handle. Your answer stays on your device.
• If you've been playing a while, you'll be asked the first time you chat, message, add a friend or trade.
• Under 13? Those features stay off on that device, and everything else in the game is exactly the same.

• A quest tracker on the dungeon screen: top right, under the minimap, clear of your thumbs. It lists every quest that counts in this dungeon, your pinned one first, with its progress and a bar.
• Wren's pet requests are on it too (🐾) whenever the current step can be done where you are.
• Watch it tick: a kill that counts makes the row flash and the number pop, and a finished quest lights up gold with Quest complete!
• Tap the header to fold it into a small 📜 chip (your device remembers), and tap again to bring it back.
• Tap a quest for the new Quests view: every quest you carry with all its details, split into *Counts in this dungeon* and *Elsewhere*. Pin one there and the tracker follows at once. It's also in the run menu, and on J with a keyboard.
• Co-op works the same way: party members following a leader see their own quests.
• Pet DPS counts only while your pet is up: the damage meter and the Breakdown divide a pet's damage by the time it was alive in the fight, so a pet that keeps dying no longer shows a misleadingly low number.

• A Privacy Policy that says exactly what the game keeps: your device ID, cloud save, chat and letters, why, for how long and who can see it. No ads, no trackers, no cookies. Compendium
• Terms of Service with the Community Rules for chat, names and trades, and how the Wardens moderate: you're always told what happened and why, and you can appeal through Quillon. Compendium
• Licences & credits: the SRD 5.1 attribution, 0x72's tiles, the fonts, the music and the emoji data, all in one place. Compendium
• Settings → Account → Your data: download your save as a file, or ask Quillon to delete your data with a letter that's already written for you.
• Links everywhere you'd look: Settings → About → Legal, the title screen and the Credits.
• Chat and social are for players 13 and older. The first time you open Social or chat, a small note says so and links the rules. Tap Got it and it's gone.

• Inspect any adventurer: tap Inspect on a profile card (a name in chat, the Players list, a friend, a leaderboard row), on a lobby seat, or on a party-mate's frame in a run, and see their hero the way you see your sellswords.
• Their whole kit, read-only: portrait and paper doll with every slot, power, stat chips, ability scores, hotbar skills with mastery rank, perks and summon form, feats, the Legend board, their pet and sellswords, and a few headline achievements.
• Tap any piece of their gear for its full card, then Compare with yours for the same ▲ / ▼ your own bag shows. Covet responsibly.
• Numbers you can trust: the power and stats are worked out on your own device from their gear, so nobody can puff theirs up.
• Rather keep your build to yourself? Settings → Account → Let other players inspect my hero (on by default). Turn it off and people see your profile card only. Blocked players never see each other, and nobody scouts you mid-Arena-match.
• Offline friends still show their hero as it was the last time they were in town.

• Wren's pet requests show on the Adventure map alongside your other quests: a green 🐾 on every dungeon where the request's current step can be done.
• They're in the Your quests strip too ("Any dungeon" when any will do), and a dungeon's detail page lists the requests waiting inside it.
• Tap a 🐾 for the request: its steps, your progress and the pet it rewards, with a button to the Menagerie and one straight to the dungeon.

• Never more than four heroes in a game. Co-op players and sellswords share the same four seats, so a full party is always four, however it's made up.
• A friend joining mid-dungeon takes a sellsword's seat: your last sellsword heads back to town to make room, and their summons go with them.
• When a friend leaves, your sellsword comes straight back, beside you, ready to fight.

• Vhoruun's Effigy has two tabs: Difficulty and World Tier, so each dial gets the room it deserves and nothing is cluttered.
• The World Tier dial is dressed to match: every tier has its own colour and pixel sigil, a pit that deepens, opens an eye at Nightmare, grows horns in the Torments and burns white at Torment X.
• Tap any tier to read what it does: extra monster levels, foe health and damage, extra elite affixes, item levels, affix values, rarity odds and when mythics drop, all from the live rules. Locked tiers say what opens them.
• Pick one and Descend at Torment IV sets it for your next run. The town's Tier button opens straight onto this tab.

Fixes

• Every World Tier shows at the Effigy (they were cut off at Torment IV on desktop).

• The Party sheet in town shows your sellswords again: their picture in their gear, with every slot around it, and a ▲ on each slot that has an upgrade waiting.
• The town's Party button counts upgrades: a green ▲ N when items in your bag would make the sellswords in your party stronger, so you can kit them out before you head down.
• In the dungeon the sheet keeps its compact gear grid, so live health and the run's tally still fit beside it.

• Rate the game: after a while in the Depths, Quillon will pop up in town at a quiet moment and ask what you think. Pick 1 to 5 stars and, if you like, tell him why.
• Tell him straight: low stars and he'll ask what went wrong, high stars and he'll blush. Every word reaches the Architect, and it lands in the same letter queue as Tell Quillon, so you can get an answer.
• No pressure: tap Maybe later and he'll ask once more, a good few hours of play down the line. Tap No thanks and he'll never bring it up again.
• Change your mind any time: Menu → Rate the game (or Settings → About) lets you rate whenever you like and swap your stars later.
• He only asks once per account, never mid-run or mid-conversation, and your answer follows you to your other devices through the cloud save.

• The Party sheet now opens on what matters: Upgrades waiting. Every item in your bag that would make a sellsword stronger, best first, with how much it adds and what it replaces. One tap on Equip on Brenna and it's on. Compendium
• Each sellsword's tab shows a green ▲ count, so you can see who's been short-changed before you open anyone.
• You don't even have to open the menu to know. A ▲ on a sellsword's portrait in the dungeon, and on the Party button of the pause menu, says there's gear in your bag with their name on it.
• Tap a sellsword's frame and their card has a Gear button that goes straight to their tab.
• Each sellsword at a glance: health, whether they're on their feet, down or being raised, the potions they carry, their stance and summon form, and all eleven gear slots in one tidy grid (a ▲ marks a slot with something better waiting).
• This run, right on their sheet: their kills, damage, how often they went down, and the pieces they picked up for themselves.
• In co-op, guests see the leader's sellswords on the Party tab too: who's standing, who's down, who's carrying potions.

• Moderators now work from inside the game. Wardens and Loremasters can step in on a spammer or a troll the moment they see it, without leaving Hearthold.
• If you're muted or banned, you're told why: who acted (a Warden, a Loremaster or the Architect), for how long, and the reason. Your chat shows how much time is left.
• A message hidden or removed by a moderator tells its author too, so nothing just quietly vanishes.
• Reports get answered faster: Loremasters can hide a line and flag it straight to the top of the Wardens' queue, and Wardens pick reports up and settle them in game.
• Staff answer your Tell Quillon letters and ideas from the game as well, so replies come sooner.
• Every staff action is written down, and each role has its limits: a Loremaster's mute lasts 15 minutes at most, and only the Architect can ban for good.
• The website's What's new page now has a version timeline: updates grouped by release line with dates and headlines, a sidebar that follows you as you read, and a Browse all versions panel on phones. Changelog

• Your quests show on the Adventure map: a gold ! sits on every dungeon you have a quest in (a number when there are several), and each act's title counts its quests.
• Tap the ! for the quest's details: what to do, how far along you are, the story, the rewards, a Pin button for the dungeon HUD, and a button that takes you straight to the dungeon.
• A Your quests strip at the top of Adventure lists everything you've taken on, and a dungeon's detail page lists the quests waiting inside it.
• The World Tier now lives at Vhoruun's Effigy, beside the difficulty: two dials in one place. Adventure shows which tier is burning and takes you there, and the Tier button in town opens it too.

• Chat history goes back much further: scroll up in global, trade or LFG chat (or tap ↑ Older messages) and older messages keep loading, back to the start of the channel.
• Direct messages too: scroll up in a conversation to read it from the beginning.
• Older messages slot in above what you're reading without jumping you around, and they stay loaded when the chat reconnects.

• Emoji everywhere you chat: global, trade, LFG, party, direct messages and the co-op chat in dungeons, in full colour next to the pixel text.
• A 😊 button in every chat box opens the emoji picker: search, your recent picks, nine categories and a skin-tone choice. On phones it slides in where the keyboard was.
• Type :fire and pick from the list (arrows + Tab or Enter, or tap). Finished codes like :skull:, :thumbsup: and :heart: turn into emoji by themselves.
• Send just one to three emoji and they show up big.
• React to messages in global, trade and LFG: hold a message (or hover it and press +) for 👍 😂 ❤️ 🔥 😮 💀, with counts under the message.
• Families, flags and other joined emoji (👨‍👩‍👧, 🏳️‍🌈, 🧙‍♂️, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿) now arrive whole instead of falling apart, and a long message is never cut in the middle of one.

Fixes

• Emoji can't be used to sneak words past the chat filter, and a single message holds at most 30 emoji (ten of the same in a row shrink to three).

• Staff now start with everything open, whatever their role (Architect, Warden or Loremaster), so they can check any corner of the game when you report something: every race and class, every dungeon and act, every World Tier, Endless Descent and every expedition destination.
• Staff also get every town building and the Menagerie at their top level, with no gold spent and no items, pets or materials handed out.
• None of it counts toward achievements, titles or leaderboards: the World Tier, campaign clears and buildings staff actually earned are what those read.

• The boss doors now seal behind whoever walks in first: you or a co-op partner. Before, only the host's step closed them, so a partner could start the fight alone while the boss chased everyone else through the corridor.
• When the doors slam, the whole party is drawn in around that player: co-op partners, sellswords, pets and summoned minions, downed ones too so they can be raised in the fight.
• They arrive spread around the player, one to a spot, instead of in a pile on one tile.
• Anyone who still ends up outside (a pet back from an errand, a fresh summon) is pulled in for as long as the doors stay shut.

• Item cards open with an Upgrade check: you and every sellsword in your party at a glance (You ▲ +114 · Brenna ▲ +48 · Garrick ▼ 5), so you no longer have to scroll down to see who'd want it.
• Tap a sellsword's name in the check to jump straight to their Equip on button.
• Chats always open on the newest message (global, trade, LFG, party, direct messages and the co-op chat), keep following new lines, and leave you in peace while you scroll back through history.

• A downed sellsword, co-op partner or pet now marks the spot: a pulsing column of light over them and DOWN · 9s above their head, so you can see where to run.
• Off screen? A pulsing arrow at the edge of the screen points straight at them, with their name and how far away they are.
• Stand over them and the marker turns gold and reads RAISING while they get back up faster (pets too, while you stay at their side).

• Hearthold has real music now: five recorded tracks with lute, low strings, choir and slow drums. Warm enough to come home to, with the chasm's weight still in it.
• They come in a shuffled rotation: a track plays (shorter ones twice), crossfades into another, then the music rests for half a minute or so and the town's own sounds carry on. You never hear the same track twice in a row.
• Settings → Audio → Town music has three choices now: Tracks (the new music), Classic (the old procedural tune) or Off. The title screen keeps the Classic score.
• The music follows your Music volume, softens while a menu is open, pauses when you switch tabs and stops when you head into a dungeon. It only downloads once you're in town.
• Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com, CC BY 4.0) and César da Rocha (CC0). Every track is credited under About → Credits and on the website.

• Name plates in town. Your handle in gold over your hero, with your title underneath, just like in the Depths.
• Your pet comes to town. It trots after you round the plaza and on your strolls, waits at your side, sits down when you linger and naps by your feet at night. Its name floats over it in its colour.
• Your sellswords wear a small, quiet name tag as they go about Hearthold, and lose it while they're inside a building.
• The square stays calm: building names always win. A plate that has no room drops its title, tucks under its owner's feet or steps aside until there's space, and never covers a label, a speech bubble or a message.
• Settings → Display → Show nameplates now covers the town too: Party only hides the sellsword tags, Off hides them all.
• Damage meter in the pause menu: tap Meter to cycle Off / Compact / Detailed mid-run, solo or co-op, as host or guest (no keyboard needed).

• Every item you pick up now says if it's worth a look: a green ▲ +N when it's an upgrade (N is the power you'd gain), a red ▼ when it's worse than what you wear.
• ▲ at Lv N marks gear you'll grow into, and ▲ for Brenna (or whoever) means one of your sellswords would want it.
• Same numbers as the item card, and co-op players see their own verdict on their own loot.

• 31 new dungeon objects, each look with its own: powder kegs in the mines and forges, chandeliers in the great halls, sarcophagi in the crypts, spore pods in the grottoes, ice pillars in the frozen depths, flesh sacs in the burning dark. Details
• Blow things up. Kegs burn for a moment and then go off, taking the next keg with them. Drop a chandelier or a stalactite on a pack, or on a boss: they can hang over the boss halls too. Mind the ring; it hurts you as well.
• Take a chance. Slide a sarcophagus lid (an occupied one rattles), open a web cocoon, drink from an alchemy table, take the cursed idol's treasure and its curse, toss a coin in a wishing well.
• Help yourself. A haunted mirror lends you your reflection for a fight, rune stones ward the party, war drums rouse you (and the next pack), offering bowls trade gold for a blessing, ore veins give smithing materials, a ballista fires on the nearest foe.
• Tap an object to target it: melee heroes walk up and swing, archers and casters stop at range and shoot. Things that cost or risk something need a moment beside them, so nothing goes off by accident. Compendium
• About a third of each floor's pots are now the look's own small breakables, so not every room is full of the same jars. Quillon has a word about each object the first time you meet it.
• Hazards hit foes hard and your own party at half strength (and stun you for half a second at most), so a keg you lit by accident stings without ruining the run. Every blast and fall shows its ring first.

• Dungeon objects: kegs, chandeliers, coffins and moreThirty themed breakables and interactables now fill the Depths: powder kegs, chandeliers, sarcophagi, mirrors and idols. What each does and where to find it.

• Standing over a downed sellsword now helps them up. Alone they get back up after 12 seconds; with you beside them it's under 5, and with two of you about 3. Compendium
• It works for fallen co-op players too, and for sellswords looking after each other, so a friend at their side gets them back in the fight much sooner.
• A soft healing sparkle on the fallen shows that it's working, and their recovery ring fills faster.

Fixes

• Hardcore players still need a Revivify (or a Scroll of Raising) to get back up, as before.
• Item cards now warn when equipping takes off your other hand: a two-handed War Staff can't share with an orb or prism, and a two-handed weapon removes your off-hand. A one-handed Quarterstaff keeps both.

• The Wizard binds only elementals now. Summon Imps is Bind Elementals: a Storm Elemental (the new default), a Fire Elemental or a Stone Elemental, with new perks for every form and a capstone each — Death Throes, Chain Lightning and Bedrock. Your imp perks moved to their elemental twins; no mastery lost. Details
• Every summon skill now has three forms: the paladin's Seraph and Aegis Archon, the Beast Master's Lynx and Grizzly, the dread knight's Bone Reavers and Grave Bulwark, Plague Bearers and an Ossuary Phalanx for the Grave Legion, a Deathreaper and a Bone Colossus for the Risen Champion, a Pit Ravager and a Hellforged Sentinel for the Greater Fiend, a Sabretooth and a Dire Wolf for the Great Bear, an Avenging Spirit and a Lantern Bearer for the Guardian of Faith. Compendium
• Your summons strengthen you. While a form stands you get its passive — fire hits harder, storms quicken you, stone hardens you, the dead feed you life, fiends sharpen your crits, beasts lend you speed, celestials mend you. One per form, on your buff row; sellswords get their own. Details
• Every summon makes an entrance: a pillar of flame, a lightning strike, rising rubble, bony hands clawing up out of the floor, a burning rift, a leap out of the dark, a beam of light or a ring of runes — and leaves the same way when its time is up.
• Your old minions stay the default wherever they were one of the three, so nothing changes until you pick. Choose forms in Hearthold (Hero → Skills, and on each sellsword's sheet). Compendium

• Summons for every class: forms, arrivals and passivesEvery summon skill in The Ember Depths now has damage, steady and tank forms, its own arrival, and a passive for its master. The Wizard binds only elementals.

• Your primary ability now powers every status you inflict, like a spell's save DC: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma, whichever your class lives on. Compendium
• Per point of its modifier: +3% chance to apply any status, +2% duration for everything you inflict (stuns, freezes and fears included), +2% damage for burns, poison and bleeds.
• Weakened, Vulnerable and Chilled bite harder too: a stronger caster's chill slows more and their Weakened takes more off a foe's swing.
• Burns, poison and bleeds still start from the hit that applied them, so everything that makes your hits bigger makes them bigger as well. Bosses still resist control, and gear like Afflicting and of Festering stacks on top.

• Every caster's main summon now comes in three forms, one per role: a damage body that hits hardest per blow but breaks easily, a steady one, and a tank with lots of HP and a taunt but little bite. Compendium
• Wizards bind elementals: a Fire Elemental whose blows erupt across a pack, a Storm Elemental that lashes foes with quick lightning from six tiles, and a slow grey Stone Elemental that roars to pull foes off you. Your imps stay too, as the default. Compendium
• Necromancers raise Bone Mages (grave-fire bursts) or Skeletal Archers next to their Bone Warriors; warlocks call a Hellhound or a chained Fiendish Guardian beside the Pact Imp; druids a Shadow Panther or a Thornback Boar beside the wolves; clerics a Hammer or a Shield beside the Blade.
• Tanks taunt: every few seconds the foes around them turn on them. Bosses listen half as long, and the hunters of the hard modes listen half as long on Hard and Epic and not at all on Legendary.
• Pick a form in Hearthold on the Hero sheet's Skills tab (sellswords too, on their sheet). In the Depths the choice is read-only. Never touch it and your summons play exactly as before.
• Every form is worth about the same: fewer bodies means bigger ones, and mastery, perks and gear grow them all alike. The numbers are on each skill card and on the new Summons page of the compendium. Compendium

• Armour type now counts for every piece, not just your chest: helms, gloves and boots too. Wizards, sorcerers and monks wear cloth, warlocks, necromancers, bards and rogues add leather, clerics, druids, rangers and barbarians add mail, and only fighters, paladins and dread knights wear plate. Compendium
• Every focus has its owners: holy symbols for clerics and paladins, arcane orbs for wizards, sorcerers and warlocks, grim tomes for necromancers and warlocks, storm prisms for wizards, sorcerers and druids, lutes for bards and totems for druids.
• Iron helms, gauntlets and greaves are mail; greathelms, adamant gauntlets and dragonbone sabatons are plate. Hoods, circlets, crowns, cloth gloves, wraps and moccasins fit anyone.
• A few named items moved so the right classes can still wear them: Trailblazer's Treads (now moccasins), Visage of the Bronze Ram, Bulwark of a Hundred Scars and Grips of the Headsman (now mail), and the Jerkin of a Thousand Pockets (now cloth). Same powers. Compendium

Fixes

• Anything your hero or a sellsword wore that their class can't wear any more moved to your bag (or the stash when full). Nothing was lost.

• Between delves your sellswords wander the town instead of standing about the square: they watch the smith at the forge, browse the stalls, pop into the Tavern or the Temple for a while, kneel to pray, spar with a straw dummy at the Training Grounds, pet the Menagerie's beasts and sit by the fountain.
• Each has their own habits: fighters drift to the Training Grounds and the Smithy, clerics to the Temple, rangers and druids to the animals, bards and rogues to the Tavern. Benched sellswords come along too.
• They stop for a word with each other or with the townsfolk now and then (never so often that the square gets noisy), and after dark they gather at the Tavern, the fountain and the Hearthfire.
• Your hero stays near the square so you can always find them, with the odd stroll to the fountain, a bench or a stall. Tap them to open your hero as before.
• Open Adventure and everyone heads back to the square to set off together. Prefer them standing still? Settings → Display → Party wanders the town.

• Pick which uniques are attuned. In Hearthold, the Hero sheet's Attunement panel lists every unique you wear with an Attune / Unattune button. The cap is still 1 / 2 / 3 at levels 5 / 10 / 20. Compendium
• Switch off single powers you don't want, like a summon or a drifting beam. An Off power simply doesn't run. Its unique keeps its attunement slot, and the item never gets stronger for it.
• You can leave a slot empty too. A newly equipped unique fills a free slot by itself and never bumps one you chose; unequip a unique and it drops out of your choice.
• Attunement is set in town: in the Depths (and as a co-op guest) the panel shows your choice read-only. Heroes who never choose keep the old order: main hand first.
• Item cards show why a power sleeps (not attuned or attunement full) and grey out powers you switched Off. The PvP arena's limit of 2 keeps the first two you chose.

• Settings now has tabs: Gameplay, Display, Audio, Account, Network and About. Each one fits on a phone held sideways, with no long scroll to find the one switch you want.
• Gameplay holds difficulty (and the way to Vhoruun's Effigy), the camera, sellsword chatter, the damage meter, loot pick-up, your pet and the tutorial.
• Display has damage numbers, screen shake, Show nameplates, fullscreen and both size controls. Audio has the volumes, town ambience and town music.
• Account gathers your handle, Discord link, cloud save and recovery codes, and deleting a save. About has the version, What's New, How to Play, Tell Quillon, our Discord and the credits.
• Settings opens on the tab you used last, and in a dungeon it opens at full size with the tabs beside the close button so more fits on screen.

• Garrick has stopped hammering every second. He works in short bursts of two to four blows, each one ringing a little differently, then rests at the anvil for a minute or two.
• Hearthold has a real soundscape now: wind that rises and falls, birds by day, crickets and an owl at night, the fountain, a dog somewhere past the walls, a cart rolling by, muffled laughter from the tavern, Lark's lute, and fire crackling by the pit.
• Nothing crowds in: sounds come a few at a time with quiet in between, and the town never plays the same one twice in a row.
• Sounds sit where they are. The smithy is loud only when it's on your screen; things off to the side come from that side, and things out of view sound far away.
• The ambience drops right down while a menu, a dialog or a story beat is open, and comes back gently when you close it.
• The town music breathes. After each pass it rests for half a minute or so, then returns in a shorter, varied arrangement.
• New Settings → Town ambience volume slider, separate from sound effects and music. If you had sound effects muted, it starts muted too.

• Sellswords carry a pouch: up to two healing potions, a Scroll of Mending and a Scroll of Raising of their own. Their potions heal as well as yours. Compendium
• They pick up potions and scrolls in the Depths like they pick up gold. A full pouch sends the find to your belt or satchel, and anything at your own feet is yours first.
• They drink when they're hurt, only ever from their own pouch, and never in a Dry Flasks rite or while wearing a no-potions unique.
• Fall with a sellsword's Scroll of Raising in the party and they'll read it and pick you up, straight away if nobody else can. They also raise a fallen friend mid-fight and read Mending when several of you are hurting.
• Give them a potion or scroll, or take it back, from the Party sheet in town or mid-run. Their frame in the Depths shows how many potions they're carrying.
• They hold off on potions while you're taking on a "clear it without potions" challenge.

• On Hard, Epic and Legendary, ordinary foes now give their full XP with the mode's XP bonus (+20% / +40% / +60%). More foes on the harder modes now means faster levelling. Compendium
• Gold and item drops from ordinary foes still pay their share, so the crowds don't bury you in loot. Elites and bosses pay in full as before.
• Vhoruun's Effigy and the compendium's difficulty table say so too.

• Hard, Epic and Legendary drop better gear: items are 2 / 3 / 4 item levels above the foe, for better materials and stronger affixes. Details
• On Epic and Legendary, every elite drops at least one rare or better item. Details
• Bosses drop more on the hard modes (up to 7 items plus their epic piece), and on Legendary a boss sometimes drops an extra legendary, or even a unique. Details Compendium
• Ordinary kills still pay their share, so the extra crowds don't bury you in junk. The rewards come from quality, elites and bosses.
• Gear now has a level requirement: item level − 4. What you find on-level is always wearable, but a level-1 hero can't be handed endgame gear. Details Compendium
• The item card shows Requires Level N (red when you're below it), and bag and stash tiles dim gear you'll grow into. Salvage all and Sell junk leave that gear alone.

Fixes

• Anything a hero or sellsword wore above its level moved to your bag (or the stash when full). Nothing was lost, and reborn heroes keep their gear.
• A boss's rare set-piece drop could turn up long before legendaries unlock. It now waits for its item level, like every other legendary.

• Harder pays better, and gear has a levelHard, Epic and Legendary now drop higher item levels, rarer elite loot and bigger boss hoards, and every item has a level requirement.

• Every hero in the dungeon now wears a name plate: your own handle in gold, your party in their colours, with their title underneath and the Architect crest for the staff.
• Sellswords carry a small, muted tag with their own name, so you can tell hired blades from real players at a glance.
• In the PvP arena your opponent's handle burns red over their head.
• Plates sit above the health bars, follow the hero without jitter, stack neatly when everyone crowds together, and fade to a ghost while a hero is down.
• New Settings → Show nameplates: All, Party only (no sellsword tags) or Off.

• Every caster's staff or wand is now a spell focus. Sorcerers, warlocks, necromancers and druids fire a bolt from range on their casting stat, like wizards always have, instead of bonking foes with the stick. Compendium
• Each caster's bolt carries their magic: sorcerers throw fire, necromancers necrotic, clerics radiant, wizards, warlocks and druids raw force.
• Casters now wield only staves and wands, and rangers only bows and crossbows. Every one of their skills fights from range, so a sword never fit.
• Necromancers start with a wand instead of a dagger.
• The caster weapons that were daggers or swords are now staves and wands, with the same powers: Moonsickle, The Patron's Tongue, Bloodquill, the Rotbloom Crook and the Hollow Pact Athame. Compendium
• New set weapons so everyone can finish their set: the Nightveil Sting (a hand crossbow for Nightveil rangers), and the Wildheart Staff and Wildheart Bow for the Wildheart Circle's druids and rangers. Compendium

Fixes

• A weapon your hero or a sellsword can no longer wield moves to your bag (or the stash when the bag is full). Nothing is lost.

• Vhoruun's Effigy now wears its own plaque, right on the statue: its sigil and your difficulty in the mode's colour. Tap it to change how hot the Deep burns. Compendium
• Building names never pile on top of each other any more, and level numbers are quieter. Build only glows when you can afford it.
• Villagers chatter a little less, never talk over a building's name or each other, and never say the same thing at once.
• The Rites and Kindling timers moved up into the top bar, out of the picture.
• Messages now arrive at the top right in bigger text, and the same message never shows twice.
• On phones: shorter labels, your hero's full name always fits, and nothing hides under the camera or the rounded corners.

• Link your Discord to your player: open Settings → Discord, tap Link Discord and type the code in our Discord server with /link. Settings flips to linked by itself the moment it lands.
• The code is six letters, lasts ten minutes and works once. Copy it with one tap, and a button takes you straight to the server.
• In our Discord, /profile shows a linked adventurer's handle, current hero, title, Primordial number and power. /profile @someone shows theirs, if they linked.
• Your Discord name stays private unless you turn on Show my Discord on my profile; then other players see it on your profile card.
• Unlink any time, in Settings or with /unlink. One Discord account links to one player: linking again moves it.

• A black basalt statue of the Ember Tyrant now stands by Hearthold's north gate. Vhoruun's Effigy is where your difficulty lives: tap it to change it any time. Its eyes and cracks glow in your difficulty's colour. Compendium
• Each mode has its own colour and fire: Easy (Smoulder), Medium (Hearthfire), Hard (Blaze), Epic (Wildfire) and Legendary (Inferno).
• The Effigy spells out every rule a mode changes, in plain words: foe health and damage, how many foes, elites, bosses and their rage timer, summons and pets, potions and the stairs, XP, gold, magic find, legendary pity and the gold you lose when you fall. Compendium
• New players choose a difficulty when they forge their first hero (Medium unless you pick otherwise). Later heroes skip the step; you can always change it at the Effigy.
• The difficulty picker has left Settings: Settings shows your current mode and takes you to the Effigy. In a dungeon you can still change it there, from the next floor.
• Hardcore heroes see Easy and Medium locked at the Effigy, as before. Rites are still always played on Hard, and in a party the host's difficulty applies.

Fixes

• Phones in landscape: the dungeon no longer leaves an empty band on both sides, the town reaches the edge away from the camera, and the band beside the camera is narrower.
• Tell Quillon and How to Play: the tabs are no longer cut off on phones in landscape.

• Hard is now half again as deadly: foes have 150% health and damage, packs are bigger and elite packs far more common. Details
• Epic is twice as deadly: double health and damage, about twice as many foes and elites everywhere. Details
• Legendary is three times as deadly: triple health and damage, about three times as many foes in huge packs of up to 16, and more than a quarter of packs led by an elite. Details
• Elites on the hard modes are tougher and hit harder, on top of all that.
• More foes doesn't mean a flood of loot: ordinary foes pay a share of their XP and drops on the hard modes, while elites and bosses pay in full. The XP, gold and magic find bonuses stay.
• The full numbers for every mode are in the compendium. Compendium

• The Pets tab: your gear sheet now has a Pets tab next to Party. Tap your pet's name under its portrait, press K, or pick Pets in the pause menu to see how it's doing mid-run. Compendium
• Your active pet up close: level and the XP it earned this run, bond, its next evolution and what it still needs, skills with live cooldowns, charm, talents and its damage and healing so far.
• Tap any stat to see how much comes from talents and how much from the charm.
• Found this run: every pet, egg and charm you picked up, where it turned up and how many floors until an egg hatches. They all wait for you in the Menagerie.
• The whole stable at a glance, new arrivals marked. Swapping your active pet still happens in town.
• A small "!" on the pet frame tells you when there's something new to look at. Works for co-op guests too.

Fixes

• The pet view now lives in the gear sheet as a Pets tab beside Party, instead of its own window, and the chat bubble no longer covers the sheet's tabs.

• Tell Quillon: found a bug or got an idea? Write a letter to the Dungeon Minder from the Menu, Settings, the pause menu or the title screen. On a keyboard, press F8 anywhere.
• Bug reports can bring a screenshot and what you were doing. You see everything pinned to your letter and can remove any of it. Never your IP address or email.
• My letters: the staff write back and Quillon relays every reply. A note pops up the moment one lands, even mid-dungeon.
• The Ideas board: browse the ideas the Architect pinned up and add your voice with a Me too.
• Two new deeds: Bug Hunter for your first bug the staff confirm and squash, and the Bugbane title at ten. Compendium
• Menus are now more compact; adjust Menu size in Settings (50–110%).
• The Daily Descent & Weekly Rite now have a card on the Adventure screen (the town chip was easy to miss). Details

Fixes

• A new trailer and store screenshots with Pipsnizzle the Thief, Vhoruun's Wager and hardcore heroes, and a Hardcore section on the website's home page.

• Hardcore heroes: tick the box when you forge a hero and death is permanent. The hero, their gear and their bag go into the grave. Details
• Hardcore heroes live in their own realm: their own gold, stash, town, sellswords and pets. Softcore riches can't carry them. Details
• Hard, Epic or Legendary only. No trades, no gifts, and parties only with other hardcore heroes. Compendium
• The Hall of the Fallen remembers every name, and Quillon reads the eulogy himself. Details
• Hardcore leaderboards and five hardcore deeds, from One Life to Ember-Hearted. Leaderboards
• What's New: you're reading it. Every update now comes with notes like these, in game and on the website. Changelog
• The website compendium caught up: dungeons, game modes, the town, quests, sellswords and encounters all have pages now. Compendium

• Hardcore heroes: one life, no second chancesHardcore mode in The Ember Depths: permadeath, a separate economy, Hard or harder only, no trading, hardcore-only parties, the Hall of the Fallen and boards.

• Quests overhaul: a bounty board with three factions, named elites with lore, townsfolk stories and a questline for every sellsword. Details
• The Expedition Table: send idle sellswords on trips while you're away. They come back with loot, eggs and a very honest journal. Details
• Pipsnizzle the Thief: Hearthold's payroll goblin is loose in the Depths with a sack of 'borrowed' loot. Catch him. Details
• Vhoruun's Wager: at the top of the stairs the Ember Tyrant offers a curse for a bigger pot. Cash out, or push your luck. Details
• The Nemesis: the monster that killed you gets a name, a crown and a grudge. Return the favour. Details
• The Hearthfire: a daily streak that grows when you play and never goes out when you don't. Details
• Daily Descent and Weekly Rite: the same seed for everyone, Ember Mutators and public boards. Details
• The Training Grounds became a real town building with five levels of drills to unlock. Details

Fixes

• Town menus fit on one screen on phones in landscape, and stay clear of the notch.

• Quests, reputation and the Expedition TableThe Ember Depths quest overhaul: the Tavern bounty board, 25 named elites, townsfolk stories, sellsword questlines, three factions and sellsword expeditions.
• Pipsnizzle the Thief, his Vault and the Mayor's ledgerPipsnizzle, Hearthold's payroll goblin, runs through the Depths with a sack of borrowed loot. How to catch him, what he drops, and how to find his Vault.
• Vhoruun's Wager: push your luck on the stairsAt each staircase Vhoruun offers a pact: carry a curse down a floor for a growing loot multiplier. Cash out at any stairs, or lose the pot when you die.
• The Nemesis: the monster that killed you remembersIn The Ember Depths the monster that kills you can become your nemesis: a name, an epithet, a rank and a grudge. It comes back stronger until you take revenge.
• The Hearthfire: a daily streak that never punishes a breakHearthold keeps a fire for you: it grows each day you play, only dims one step when you miss a day, never goes out, and banks rested XP while you're away.
• Daily Descent and Weekly RiteThe same seed, map and Ember Mutators for everyone: one scored Daily Descent a day, unlimited Weekly Rite attempts, public boards, rite chests and titles.
• The Training GroundsHearthold's drill hall: beat on dummies, read your damage per second on the live meter, test resistances, bosses and burst parses. Five levels to build.

• Achievements and titles: 143 deeds to chase and 94 titles to wear under your name, from Common to Mythic. Details
• Primordial: the first 1,000 heroes ever to descend carry a numbered title nobody can earn later. Compendium
• Titles show everywhere your name does: chat, party frames, the player list, leaderboards and over your hero in co-op. Compendium
• Co-op fast path: party games travel over a UDP relay. Smoother on shaky connections, and nobody ever sees your IP address. Details
• The Training Grounds: beat on dummies and read your damage per second. The live damage meter works in dungeons too. Details

Fixes

• Beast cages are only held shut by guards you can actually see, not hidden ambushers or foes behind walls.

• Achievements, titles and staff badges143 achievements worth 4,505 points and 94 titles from Common to Mythic, shown under your name in chat, party frames and leaderboards.
• Co-op netcode v2 and the fast UDP relayWhy co-op in The Ember Depths feels smoother: binary delta snapshots, prediction for your own hero, interpolation for everyone else, and a UDP relay.

• Difficulty overhaul: Hard, Epic and Legendary change the rules now, not just the numbers. Foes hunt past your minions and bosses enrage. Details
• Loot scarcity: fewer free legendaries, so the orange glow means something again. Details
• Move speed goes up to +100% with a soft cap, a little speed every two levels, and speed affixes on more slots. Details
• Cloud saves: your heroes are backed up automatically, with a recovery code and device links. No account needed. Details
• 25 new dungeon looks: every dungeon now looks like its name, from thorny warrens to a blood-red cathedral. Details
• Summon Imps now has downtime (30 s cooldown, 20 s imps): the imp wall was a little too permanent. Compendium

Fixes

• Co-op guests: casters no longer vanish, the loot filter works for guests, and heroes stop pushing each other one way.

• The difficulty overhaul: hard modes are systems nowWhat changed on Hard, Epic and Legendary in The Ember Depths: summon hunters, boss enrage, bigger packs, stingier stairs, and the full table of numbers.
• Move speed up to +100%, with a soft capHow move speed works in The Ember Depths: +1% every two levels, speed affixes on more slots, a soft cap at +60% and double speed at most.
• Cloud saves, backups and recovery codesYour Ember Depths heroes are saved to the cloud automatically, with backups, a recovery code and device links, and no account or email needed.
• 25 new dungeon looks: every dungeon looks like its nameBramble Hollow has thorns, the Weeping Vaults are flooded and the Brimstone Bastion is a forge: 30 dungeon looks and where each one appears.

• Wizard: the Infernal Binding school replaces necromancy. Summon Imps binds claws, bolts or a whole court. Compendium
• Every skill got its own icon, and every item base a hand-built pixel icon with a proper tooltip. Compendium
• Uniques have their own in-world looks, and Lost & Found sends home the ones you left on the floor. Details
• A 5th hotbar slot at level 10 and a 6th at 20.
• Sellswords chat, bicker and flirt, scoop up gold for the party and pick up their own upgrades. Compendium
• Merchant: sell by rarity or sell whatever your search shows. Locked items, upgrades and uniques are always kept.
• Friend requests can be answered anywhere, even mid-dungeon.

Fixes

• A boss can no longer end up outside its sealed arena.
• Rings compare against both worn rings, with Replace Ring 1 or Ring 2.
• Beards sit on the jaw, below the nose, where beards belong.
• Co-op guests get the same hotkeys as the leader and a ready-to-descend flow at the stairs.

• The Ember Depths has a website: a compendium of every class, skill and item, live leaderboards and a press kit. Compendium
• Co-op netcode v2: your hero moves the instant you do, and everyone else glides instead of teleporting. Details
• Challenge a friend to the arena: they get an Accept or Decline, no codes.
• A new title screen: Hearthold at night above the Ember Depths.
• The town dock got HD pixel buttons, and the chasm is now a permanent part of Hearthold.
• Auto handles are whimsical now (SootyMimic, GrimLantern…). Chosen handles are untouched.

• HD monsters: 70 new designs with full animations, plus 38 hand-built bosses with phase forms and death set pieces. Compendium
• 25 monsters with new tricks: shielders, healers, burrowers, splitters, mirrors, snipers and more. Compendium
• Social: chat, a player list, trading and ranks, plus handles, friends and direct messages.
• Hearthold came alive: parallax castle skyline, day and night, villagers, animals and ambience.
• A new opening: Hearthold's worst afternoon, from the first tremor to Vhoruun himself.
• Buff and debuff rows with tooltips on every frame, and a Breakdown of damage, healing and damage taken after each run.
• A proper Look step in the character creator, and faster menus with 44 px touch targets.

• 100 uniques: named class weapons, archetype armour and jewelry with powers that change how you play. Details
• Class parity: casters and skirmishers got real survival tools (barriers, Misty Step, evasion). Compendium
• Hired sellswords arrive at your level with a full kit of gear rolled for them.
• A new title screen layout and a hero select with stats, gear and campaign progress at a glance.
• Full screen from the title and Settings (and Add to Home Screen help on iPhone).

Fixes

• The town's top bar no longer gets squeezed off short phone screens.

• 100 uniques: one of a kind, and they know itHow the 100 unique items in The Ember Depths work: class weapons, archetype armour and jewelry, powers that change how you play, attunement and where they drop.

• The PvP arena: seven maps with hazards (rising lava, crumbling floors, lightning), a match lobby, ratings and a leaderboard.
• Pets: 25 companion creatures to hatch, tame and raise, with skills, evolutions and errands. Wren runs the Menagerie. Compendium
• 19 new legendary bows, quivers, amulets, rings and belts. Compendium
• Loot picks the gear slot first, so jewelry and bows stop getting drowned out by swords.
• New party frames, shared by the leader and the guests.

• Status effects: burning, poison, bleeding, shock, chill that turns to freeze, stun, fear and more. Compendium
• Elites and bosses roll Diablo-style affixes: walls, sentry beams, ice orbs, mortars, cages, vortexes and worse.
• Heroes got real bodies for every race, class and gender, with a live preview while you create them. Compendium
• Tutorials: coach marks in your first dungeons, level-up explainers, stat tooltips and a How to Play guide.
• A loot filter and quick salvage that work mid-dungeon.
• Wizard: Wall of Fire replaces Cone of Cold. Compendium
• Co-op: a fallen leader spectates while the party fights on, and scrolls of Mending and Raising can drop.

Fixes

• Sellswords only fight foes they can see and reach, instead of chasing into rooms behind walls.
• A clearer stairs compass.

• Online co-op for up to four: lobbies, party chat, instanced loot for everyone and item gifts.
• The game has a name: The Ember Depths.
• Meet Quillon Dicewright, Dungeon Minder: a five-act story, a narrator and a lot of opinions.
• Seven droppable class sets and legendaries with 60 visible powers. Compendium
• Four new room puzzles, and a new fantasy score for the town, the dungeons and the bosses.
• Automatic updates that wait for a safe moment: in town, or at the next stairs.

Fixes

• No more descending in the middle of a fight.
• Co-op partners follow you downstairs onto your exact tile (instead of into the rock).

• 24 new monsters and 5 new ways for them to fight. Compendium
• Epic bosses, sigil puzzles and captives to rescue. Compendium
• The bounty board: ten kinds of quests, trophies to gather and wandering mini-bosses with something to say.
• Cloaks and belts for everyone, robes for casters. Compendium
• Easier-to-read heroes and monsters: outlines, shadows and a wind-up before every big swing.

Fixes

• Bows are held properly and aim where you point.

• Hearthold needs a hero. A real-time pixel dungeon crawler with tabletop rules: pick a race and a class and dive into five acts. Compendium
• Classes grow from level 1 to 20 with subclasses, and feats instead of ability score boosts if you like. Compendium
• Skills get stronger the more you use them: mastery ranks 1–10 with perk choices along the way.
• The Smithy upgrades gear up to +10, with Awakening; the Tavern hires sellswords to fight beside you.
• 25 dungeon bosses with phases, vault guardians, mimics and traps. Compendium
• Unlockable classes and races, a hero roster, visible gear on your hero and HD pixel portraits. Compendium