Weekly Live Patch: v2.0.0-beta.1834

With the short patch cycle since Monday's last live patch, the notes are bit shorter than usual ;) That being said, most of July I will be spending revisiting and updating OLDER systems and aspects of the game I've been meaning to upgrade. That means new Features will likely be in August, etc., while I dial in on the current game state.

──────────────────────── NEW FEATURES ────────────────────────

Receptionist Dashboard

• A new Receptionist tab in the Registry surfaces the master renewal controls — enable, budget cap, and priority — without digging into the staff card.

• It opens on a Week 48 Renewal Forecast: a Contract Ledger grouped by role that projects every member's wage across the next 10 years, with the Receptionist's live negotiation rate, projected renewal costs, and savings front and center.

• Every contract expiring this year shows its outcome at a glance — Renews, At Risk, Blocked (with the reason), or Expires — using the same logic the Week 48 pass actually runs, so the forecast matches what happens.

• Arm any expiring contract for auto-renewal with one click on its expiry badge, which flips from red "Expires" to green "Renew." An Auto-Renew All toggle plus budget-cap and priority tuning round out the front office.

Morale is a bit more Clear (WIP)

• The Adventurer Card Morale tab now lists the ongoing weekly forces on each adventurer — guild amenities, Mess Hall menu, Veteran's Wing, legacy gear, natural recovery, difficulty drift, ambition frustration and more — with a per-week value on each and a net weekly trend, so you can see exactly why morale is rising or falling. Deployed heroes show that these effects are paused.

• This is the first step of an on-going effort to surface the things that impact Morale.

New gear to craft

• Filled the endgame equipment gaps with craftable Steel, Battle, Mithril War, and Reaver Axes (standard → master), the Mithril Longbow and Skypiercer Bow (expert/master), the Titan's Maul (master mace), and Mithril Weave and Umbral Shroud light armor (expert/master) for Rogue and Archer builds — closing the "no axes above Basic, no bows above Advanced, no light-armor endgame" gaps. Placeholder art for now.

Setup & trade

• Save up to 3 custom difficulty presets on the New Game screen — recall, overwrite, or delete a slider set with one click.

• Block a material from import in your Material Trade Policy so rivals never offer it, keeping unwanted stock out of your warehouse.

New Translation Atelier

• Several kind souls have reached out to me interested in helping improve the quality of the localization work game-wide (Claude is only so good). In turn, I have put together an Localization Atelier as hub to create, review, and submit translation suggestions. If you're interested in gaining access to this tool, please email me at ian@themathteam.io.

──────────────────────── QUALITY OF LIFE ────────────────────────

Parties & Contracts

• Set and Proving contracts now tell you where the required hero currently is — which party they're in, whether they're injured or resting and for how long, or that they're at base unassigned — so you no longer have to hunt the roster.

• Set Completion and Party of Heroes contracts now carry a badge on the quest board naming the required hero or party, so you don't have to open the writ to learn it.

• Party cards show a countdown until a deployed party returns from its quest or raid, and a "Ready in ~Nw" estimate for parties at base with injured or resting members.

• When planning a lineup for a deployed party, the picker now previews the OVR impact of adding each hero, flags which heroes would unlock a new class synergy, and lets you re-add a member you removed from the plan.

Crafting & Gathering

• A new "Buy all missing materials" button on a recipe buys every in-stock, affordable material you're missing in one click, instead of clicking each row across a dozen crafters every turn.

• The technique selector no longer vanishes when you run low on materials — pick your technique up front and queue the craft, and it fires once the materials arrive.

• The gatherer detail now shows a "Rare find" row — its tier-gated drop chance (for example, a Miner's "10%/wk Mithril Ore," or "@ Tier N+" when still locked) — alongside the usual yield.

Treasurer & Economy

• In addition to the free Treasurer at the start of a run, you can now hire a Treasurer from Treasury Tier 1 (was Tier 2) — a guild should have one as soon as it has a Treasury.

• Doubled the Treasurer's auto-trade partner caps to 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 by skill, so a high OVR Treasurer works a real book of partners instead of a punishingly small one.

• A new tooltip explains the Treasurer's spread — how far above base market it auto-sells and below it auto-buys, widening with skill.

Academy & Recruiting

• Youth-prospect scout completions now appear in the Weekly Report under "Prospects Scouted" and in the Hero's Hearth tavern feed; clicking the feed entry jumps to the Academy Prospects tab.

• Start a headhunt straight from an idle scout's row with the full search-type picker — role, class, staff, crafter, gatherer — plus auto-repeat.

• The Staff recruit tab gains "Headhunted" and dismissed-view filters, and you can restore a dismissed staff, crafter, or gatherer recruit from their detail panel.

• Graduating prospects now show their zodiac sign and element in the graduation ceremony and on the graduation cards.

• The mentor picker pushes mentors already assigned to another trainee to the bottom, keeping free mentors and this trainee's own mentor on top.

Factions

• The Parley option no longer hides behind a Temple-standing wall — anyone can open the conversation. Only the deeper Accord still requires the standing or knowledge to broker it.

Interface

• The rival hover-card button now reads "View Adventurer" instead of "View in Rankings," making clear that rival adventurers can be inspected.

• Unfilled synergy slots now read "NOT RECRUITED" with a neutral empty-slot mark instead of "??? NOT FOUND," so a missing class no longer looks like an error.

• Scout report OVR now notes it's the recruit's base value from raw stats; once on your roster it rises with guild building bonuses and equipment.

• A new Crossroads header button appears whenever heroes are waiting to choose a Calling, showing the count and jumping straight to the decision — and staying hidden when no one is waiting.

• AdjustedThe New Game screen's Doom Deadline description no longer contradicts the toggleit now correctly explains the deadline defaults to 1,000 years, and can be lowered for pressure or turned off entirely.

──────────────────────── BALANCE ────────────────────────

Endgame progression

• Weekly market stock now scales with your Merchants standing — roughly +25% at Revered, +50% at Exalted, up to a +75% cap at deep Exalted — so the scarce materials that gate late-game crafting become buyable at volume.

• Mythic (Tier 10) guilds can now field up to 15 parties (was 13). Existing saves expand automatically on load.

• Runic Attunement stat gains on equipment now cap by rarity (Common +8 up to Legendary +48), keeping higher-rarity gear permanently ahead. Items already over the cap keep their current stats.

Economy

• The Treasury now reduces guild payroll — cumulatively 3% / 6% / 10% at Tier 1 / 2 / 3 — applied consistently to your gold, the ledger, and your weekly net.

Academy & Factions

• Your noble recruit-quality levers finally pay off in Academy mode: Noble Court Influence, Heraldic Update, and difficulty quality now nudge the youth scouting pool toward better prospects, and the Noble Heir Referral delivers a guaranteed A-Tier-potential prospect into the Academy instead of an unhirable free agent.

• Faction correspondence, joint-op, and dispatch missions now require a full, valid party like every other deployment, closing an exploit where under-strength parties earned identical rewards.

• Completing a faction contract now grants its party a small XP reward scaled by the contract's duration, so tying a party up no longer feels like a wasted slot.

Trade

• Rivals no longer offer more of a material than they actually hold, and accepting such an offer no longer mints stock the rival never had.

──────────────────────── BUG FIXES ────────────────────────

Trade & Markets

• Rival trade counter-offers no longer deadlock. When you've offered everything you own and the rival wants more, it now rolls the shortfall into a gold demand instead of handing back the same rejected terms — and if it genuinely can't form a different offer, it declines cleanly rather than looping forever.

• The Markets "Likely Accept" label now matches the rival's actual accept decision, including the tougher terms a same-division competitor demands, so trades it calls likely are no longer countered or declined.

• Trade offer valuations now price both sides at replacement value and per unit, so an even swap reads as even instead of a false big win, and large batches no longer show inflated per-unit worth.

• Portfolio cost basis and realized profit/loss are now accurate for trades that mix goods and gold — materials no longer absorb the value of gold exchanged alongside them.

Combat & Narration

• Fallen heroes from emergency quests now appear in the battle log, so a "0 injuries" result no longer hides casualties.

• Crown Cup combat narration now matches each fighter's class — archers loose arrows, mages cast spells, melee fighters strike with blades, staplers staple — and names the hero who actually dealt the blow.

• Tower critical hits and killing blows now narrate with the attacker's real weapon, so an archer or mage crit no longer reads as a generic melee strike.

Crown Cup

• The All-Tournament Team's "Best Overall" now goes to the genuine top performer of the whole field instead of the best player on a losing guild.

• A healer who wins Best Overall now shows the healing that earned the slot, rather than their damage number.

Adventurers & Staff

• A friend's name now always shows on the Relationships & Chemistry card, even for bonds formed through party training or after older names were pruned from a save.

• Two adventurers of the same class now always show the same class-rarity color; legacy saves with a drifted value are corrected on load.

• The quartermaster no longer reports "Insufficient funds" for cheap items whose repair cost rounds to zero — those are now repaired for free, and the warning only shows for a genuine gold shortfall.

Quests & Progression

• Quest milestones now count one per quest completed instead of once per party member, so "10 Quests Completed" and similar milestones no longer fire far too early.

• The Risk/ROVR quest sort now orders quests even with no party selected, instead of silently falling back to "most recently posted."

• Completing a Crown Contract from the quest board now counts toward the Military "Oath of Arms" obligation.

Saves & Stability

• A manual save or quicksave now confirms the write actually landed on disk before flashing "Saved!"; a failed write reports an error instead of falsely claiming success.

• Loading a different guild now warns you when the shared autosave still holds another guild, so advancing a week can't silently overwrite that game's only safety net.

• Fixed a year-end crash that could hit a low-gold guild with a commander when the low-gold advice appeared.

Multiplayer

• Year-end awards no longer claim you're "competing across all guilds" when the only entrants are your own adventurers — they now use guild-scoped framing.

• Scout and staff bids that win now actually join your guild: hires are checked against in-flight bids so you can't over-queue, and affordability is measured against the upfront hiring fee instead of the full contract value, so a cash-tight guild's winning bids no longer silently lapse.