Big Beta Update: Unified Leveling Progression, Map-based War Table, Garrison

PATCH NOTES: V2.0.0-BETA.3335

I am very excited to finally push this update, it's been a long time coming.

Today marks a game-wide update that fundamentally unifies how XP is acquired, how Leveling works across all unit types, and how Stats are earned. In short, leveling up is now how heroes gain stats, training grants XP + a Training Focus that shapes those level-ups, and staff grow from doing their jobs in the same way.

Furthermore, I just finished up the initial build of an interactive War Table map of the Hiltcrest frontier, which was easily the most complex and difficult thing I have ever built, holy moly. To boot, the next upgrade has hit the new Garrison system (support staff and new battle frameworks have been added) and rival players may now duel in multiplayer.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the size of this upgrade and how many systems were touched, I am pushing this to Beta now so that I can collect bug reports and grind through fixes, but I will also not push a new Live version update this week to help the cause.

This means the next Live update is scheduled for 7/29.

EXTRA NOTE: This is also great timing for a regroup because I will be having a baby this week and will be entering dad-mode in the very near future! So, I'll need to pump the brakes on a few things here until life can return to the shire. Don't worry, the game is still happening and updates will continue, but I'll need to focus on my shiny new goblin for a bit so I won't be as responsive as I usual am or pushing updates at my usual cadence.

UPCOMING SCHEDULE:

7/19: Big Beta Patch

7/19-21: Beta Bug Fixes

7/22: No Live Patch (Skipped for the Week)

7/23-28: Beta Bug Fixes

7/29: Live Patch Update (with all the goodies in this post)

Okay, the deets:

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FEATURES

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Unified Leveling Progression

One growth engine for everything

• Stats now come from leveling up. Every level rolls stats through one class-weighted, potential-gated formula, and every activity feeds it: quests, raids, contracts, tower runs, party drills, solo training, instructor drills, and garrison skirmishes.

• XP is XP, you hit the level's requirement, you level up. A quest's XP and a training program's XP are interchangeable fuel toward that threshold.

• Class identity and potential matter more. Your class weights are the roll's base layer (primaries grow fastest), and potential ceilings gate every point. Grimoire-boosted stats above ceiling are never touched.

Training no longer prints stats and now shapes them

This is the shift to internalize

training no longer gives stats directly. I know we've all loved juicing our adventurers this way, but in the broader balance scope of the game, it made less-and-less sense as the game evolved. Now, completing a training program pays out a big chunk of XP and stamps a Training Focus (◈).

Here's how that works

• A Training Focus biases your next level-up. A trained program bumps its stats one weighting tier hotter on upcoming rolls, a focused primary is +2 guaranteed, with a shot at +3. The stats themselves land whenever the hero next levels up, which might be off a quest, not the training. Drill a hero into a tank, and their levels come out tank-shaped.

• Focus charges come from intensity: Light 2 / Standard 3 / Intensive 4 / Extreme 4, +1 from a specialized instructor, cap 5. Those charges are consumed at the moment of the next level-up. Watch the ◈ focus chip on the dossier and the rolled gains in the level-up celebration.

• Party drills stamp a 1-charge focus (captains train Leadership; everyone else bonds — Loyalty/Teamwork) and never overwrite a richer solo focus. Chemistry remains party training's headline reward.

The XP economy: train early to grow, train late to shape

• Programs pay a flat XP chunk plus a % of your current level's requirement, from 150 + 2% (fundamentals) up to 1,500 + 8% (mastery). Rookies level fast off the flat chunks, so early training feels like growth. Veterans get a steady supplement plus the Focus, so late training is about steering where their quest-driven levels land. Quests remain the top XP source at every career stage.

• Party training XP joins the same hybrid curve, scaled to the party's average level.

• Extreme intensity is now a genuine gamble. Its charge bonus was trimmed to match Intensive, and the training-injury roll is now seeded. It still leads in XP/week, but it comes with risk.

Staff & crafters finally grow properly from working

• Work = XP. Every staffer earns a weekly employed trickle plus real chunks for doing the job: scout reports, finished crafting jobs, gear improvements, gatherer hauls, students taught, star readings, raid-week analysis, contract renewals at the desk, construction progress, treasurer trade volume.

• Level-ups roll their stat sheet with role-identity bias (scouts sharpen Insight/Focus, crafters Finesse, instructors Leadership), and skill grows from the stats. A busy scout now visibly outgrows an idle one.

• Talent still learns faster: high-potential staff level quicker (F 0.8× → S 1.75× pace), preserving the fast-learner identity the old invisible drift had.

• The old passive weekly drift, the treasurer's private XP loop, and the separate scout/gatherer/foreman engines are all consolidated into this one system. The level badge on a staffer now means something.

Auto-training, smarter

• Weakness mode now ranks programs by focus usefulness (largest-headroom stats) + XP; auto-training still stops when a program's stats are all at ceiling. Manual enrollment remains the XP-only path for maxed heroes.

Key Takeaways

A level-up doesn't hand everyone the same +stats. The moment you cross the threshold, the game rolls your stat gains, and that roll is shaped by three per-unit things:

• Class weights: a Knight's roll favors STR/DEF, a Ranger's favors DEX. Same level-up, different stat spread.

• Potential ceilings: the roll can't push a stat past that unit's cap.

• Training Focus: if they've got a ◈ charge, the trained stats roll one tier hotter.

So two heroes can hit level 10 off the exact same quests and come out with different sheets. That's the "difference" — it's in the reward, not the timing.

A high-potential unit converts the same XP into levels faster (their thresholds come quicker). So a talented rookie and a mediocre one doing identical work will not be the same level a year later.

Leveling up works the same for everyone: hit the XP requirement, gain a level. What changes per hero is the stat roll that level-up produces: your class weights, your potential ceilings, and any Training Focus decide where the points land.

Note: This rework is ON for every save. No migration needed. Your heroes keep everything they've earned.

The War Table

• Hit "M", a fancy new Map view is here! Click a region to read its contracts; your parties, quests, and raids are pinned where they're actually happening.

• Take Note: This is 100% a work-in-progress. There is some flickering on my older machines, so I'm working on optimization before this makes it to the Live version. If you hit flickering, please let me know.

• Every open quest and raid shows on the map as its own kind-specific mark (hero work, raid, crisis, Crown, alliance, dungeon, rift, ruins, coast, and more), and quests in unexplored regions appear as faded "rumor" marks so nothing on the board is missing from the map.

• Deployed parties march the road: their coin travels out from Hiltcrest, sits on-site during the mission, and marches home on the final week — with the party captain's portrait on the pin.

• Once you've built the War Room, deploy a party or muster a raid straight from a region's panel — same handlers, same checks as the list.

• A command rail with Field, Contracts, and Dispatches tabs: your deployments and their marching status; every open contract across the frontier grouped by region, soonest-to-expire first; and a war-news feed of world events, garrison/tower news, quest returns, and supply convoys from the last 8 weeks.

• Charter standing supply convoys to surveyed regions — they deliver material bundles each week for a weekly upkeep, with a chance of ambush along the road (guarded convoys cost more but are safer).

• Regions are contested ground. Completing quests and raids builds your seasonal presence in a region; holding a region halves your supply convoys' ambush risk, while a rival holding it raises it. The map shows who controls each region.

• Neighboring guilds live in a docked roster strip: division rivals ringed in gold, a trust dot, a caravan-offer badge, and a dying-offer pulse. Click to open a trade.

• And for future iPad users, the map is a real camera. Scroll or pinch to zoom (toward the cursor), drag or two-finger-drag to pan, click a region to zoom in, Reset view to pull back. Open it from anywhere with the header Map button or the M hotkey.

Frontier Patrol

• Station a full party to guard a surveyed region. A patrol automatically takes that region's contracts, builds presence to seize control of it, fights with better odds in regions you hold (and worse in rival-held ones), and can't be redeployed elsewhere until you recall it. A patroller who holds the marches long enough earns the permanent Frontier Warden title.

• Your Guild Commander recommends the best region to patrol — a rival-held region to reclaim or a contested one to claim first — with a one-click button to station your strongest ready party there.

Guild PVP Duels (Multiplayer)

• In competitive leagues you can now challenge another player's guild to a wagered 5-versus-5 duel. Issue the challenge, the defender accepts or declines, the server resolves it, and both sides watch the same replay. Win-loss records appear on the standings, and mid-season prompts suggest an opponent to duel.

• Challenge an imported ghost guild to a friendly duel straight from its profile.

Garrison

• Garrison skirmishes are now running on the new battle system. When the deep reclaims a held floor, that floor's own named denizens surge up, resolved through the full combat engine and played out as an animated arena with real draining HP bars, fighter portraits, and blow-by-blow attribution, replacing the faceless placeholder.

• Station a support staffer — a Cook, Blacksmith, or Scout — at a fortified garrison hold. They aid the watch (easing fatigue, strengthening defense, or drawing fewer raider probes) but stop doing their normal guild work while stationed, and a staffer at an overrun hold can be wounded or killed. More staffer options will be added over time.

Misc.

• Co-op league Tower gains a Coalition War Record: the front-floor boss dossier, a squad role-readiness readout, a tally of the supplies each guild has sent its allies, and a one-click Supply the Front shortcut.

• New Underworld shadow contracts: sabotage, caravan-heist, and political-elimination party missions with high gold payouts, unlocked through Underworld favor.

• AddedBestiary UpdateSix new giant-spider enemies, from cellar spiders and swarming broods to the armored Broodmother, now appear in quest encounters across dungeons, wilds, underground, and town granaries.

• Upgrading the Workshop now raises your weekly refinement-time budget (+1/+2/+4 across its tiers) — a building-based way to lift the cap beyond hiring and training crafters.

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• Garrison defense now factors in the stationed squad's chemistry, class synergy, teamwork, and morale — the same composition strength quests and raids use — so a well-matched garrison holds its floors better, and the Tower tab's garrison OVR now matches what the skirmish actually resolves on.

• Holding a garrison floor is markedly grindier: a defense at even strength is a hard-fought grind roughly all the time (it was a clean repel about 60% of the time in sims), and a clean repel now takes roughly 1.3–1.45× the enemy's strength.

• A crafted item's sale value now scales with its total stat budget, so a heavier, better recipe outsells a lighter same-tier one; recipe cards preview the expected per-stat range before you craft.

• Faction "opportunity" events (noble auctions, merchant shipments, and the new Consortium Trade Fair) now roll a varied crate of goods and a varied cost each time they appear — usually worthwhile, occasionally a real loss — instead of a fixed guaranteed-profit bundle. And publicly backing one side of a two-sided faction dispute now locks the rival faction's full-support option: you can commit to only one side, though the softer neutral/mediate/hedge choices stay open.

• Extreme-intensity training now grants 4 focus charges instead of 5.

• New guilds no longer start with a free Treasurer; the Treasury is now buildable from Guild Tier 1 (was Tier 3) so you can earn the Treasurer role from the start.

• Crafting commissions can now demand a specific item type or a by-stat item — ending the "fill any order with the cheapest junk" exploit — and can be declined for a small cost instead of only left to expire.

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Progression & Staff

• Drilling an adventurer whose stat was pushed above its normal ceiling by a Grimoire of Capricorn no longer knocks that stat back down to the ceiling.

• Treasurers and quartermasters no longer wrongly appear in the year-end Top Performers or Hall of Fame nominations.

• Reborn (New Game+) heroes now re-roll fresh level-up stats instead of repeating their past life's gains.

• Captain drills again train leadership on the captain and loyalty/teamwork on the rest.

• The Treasurer's XP bar now shows the correct amount needed to level up (it previously overstated progress and sat near-full for weeks).

• Weekly staff skill-up notices now name a gatherer's specific profession (Miner, Herbalist, etc.) instead of a generic "Gatherer".

• Instructor drills no longer waste on quartermasters/treasurers, and instructor auto-training keeps coaching a hero on broad programs until every targeted stat is maxed.

Economy & Buildings

• A skilled cook (skill 75+) now actually doubles the Family Dinner buff to +2 as advertised. The cook's skill had never been read, so it was always +1.

• Cancelling a training program now refunds exactly what you paid at your difficulty setting (it previously under-refunded on hard presets and printed gold on easy ones), and party-training cost readouts now show the difficulty-adjusted price.

• Gear with a true sell value of 0 no longer displays or prices as 100g.

• The faction-vendor "ACTIVE" badge now lights up only for the item that actually created the buff, not for other items sharing the same effect.

• Materials granted by faction letter actions now respect your Warehouse storage cap.

• Crown Requisition recipes (Royal Guard Plate and siblings) now show their proper item art instead of a generic slot icon.

Quests, Raids & Ambitions

• A guild that spent its yearly raid budget now sees fresh raid bounties on Week 1 of the new year instead of a dead raid board, and the empty-board hint now distinguishes a spent annual budget from an unlucky week.

• After the Tower is conquered or sealed (or in CCL-only mode), heroes no longer get stuck on an ambition that requires Tower floors. New recruits skip such drives and any stranded hero is re-rolled to a completable one; the Crown's "advance 3 Tower floors" commission now requires Tier 6 and is no longer issued once the Tower is sealed.

• "The Master" ambition now counts only top-performer finishes in Tier 4+ quests, as intended.

• The weekly affordability sweep no longer auto-cancels pending adventurer/poach offers you can't currently afford, and commissions no longer ask for a recipe your guild hasn't unlocked.

Commander, Roster & Scouting

• Commander advice about a restless or ambition-driven hero is now marked "heeded" only when the hero's situation actually improves, not merely because you deployed them.

• The Guild Legends card shows the proper archetype name instead of a raw internal label.

• Commander's Ledger swap cards now spell out the full ask ("add X, bench Y") instead of only the incoming name, and the "top contender" now agrees between screens.

• Youth-prospect scouting reports show the prospect's type ("Youth") instead of a blank class.

• A member whose contract lapses at year-end while out on a mission now reads in the log as "departed on return from their mission," not the misleading "chose not to re-sign."

Multiplayer

• League guild duels now drop injured members server-side (a tampered client can't field injured fighters), and duels no longer grant flat participation renown toward standings — only the wager moves them.

• Switching to a new league without leaving first no longer drops a legit duel result or carries stale duel records, and co-op lobbies no longer show a non-functional duel button.

• Guild and adventurer names with non-Latin characters no longer corrupt when a large league world-seed is submitted.

Save/Load, Map & Platform

• After starting New Game+, the game no longer occasionally loads a stale pre-NG+ autosave or resurfaces it in your save list.

• Old-save quests carrying legacy region names now appear correctly on the map.

• Fixed emoji rendering as blank "tofu" squares (Crown, guild icons, the Multiplayer button) and a black-window launch crash on some Linux/Proton setups.

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• Below Armory Tier 2, the gear panel now explains that the Improvement System is locked and previews what you'd unlock, instead of showing an empty panel.

• Confirmation prompts (cancel headhunt, delete/broadcast scouting templates, disable auto-training, buy-all) now use themed in-game dialogs instead of the browser's plain popup, and level-up highlights are recolored green (they read as reddish/negative before).

• The Workshop crafting queue can be collapsed to reclaim panel space (persisted across reloads), and the Stations tab now groups workshop cards under the building that unlocks each.

• Buying the Crown Commission Blueprint now shows an at-purchase toast naming exactly which recipe you unlocked.

• The Quest Board's ambition-focus filter labels each hero with their current party (or "Unassigned"), and the Marketplace's Bulk Deals perk now makes clear it applies only to bulk-selling gear.

• The garrison support-staff detachment gets its own legible, dedicated management view.

• Buildings, workshop stations, the Tower, and the frontier map now display hand-drawn illustrations (building and station cards on a warm parchment backdrop).