Alpha v0.57.12 - Patch Notes

v0.57.12 - Alignment Audit, Prison Chat, Bank Wages, Gauntlet Rewards

Four shipsets. One new feature (chat from prison cells), three bug fixes from in-game reports, plus a deep audit of the Chivalry/Darkness system that closes a class of overflow exploit and unlocks four pieces of previously unreachable content.

New: Chat from Prison

Imprisoned players can now use communication slash commands from their cell — /say, /shout, /tell, /who, /emote, /gossip, /guild, /ginfo, /gc. Previously, getting thrown in prison meant being cut off from the online world for N days with no way to interact with anyone.

Action and admin commands are not allowed from a cell — no forming dungeon parties, no guild administration, no guild banking. Trying one produces"From this cell you can only speak — not act."in place of executing the command.

Thanks to LowLevelJavaCoder for the community PR that kicked this off.

Bug Fix: Bank Guard Wages Finally Scale With Level

Player report: hired as a bank guard at level 50 for 8,500 gold/day, leveled up to 100 (where the formula should pay 16,000 gold/day), and the wage stayed stuck at 8,500 forever. The only known workaround was to resign and re-apply.

The bug: the wage formula 1000 + Level * 150 was only calculated at hire time and stored as a static value. Nothing recomputed it on level-up.

Fixed: the bank now recomputes the wage from the player's current level on every daily payout and on every bank visit. Pre-v0.57.12 guard characters with frozen wages will auto-correct to the correct level-appropriate wage on their next bank visit.

Bug Fix: Gauntlet Zero-Reward Victory

Player report from Anchor Road's Gauntlet

main attack critically hit the wave opponent for 14,476 damage, Phoenix Fire enchant proc, Frostbite proc, Mana Siphon proc — all the right messages appeared — but the victory screen showed "Defeated 0 monster(s)!

Experience gained

0 Gold gained: 0." No wave reward, no XP, no gold. The very next fight in the same gauntlet run worked normally.

Root cause: the multi-monster combat engine renders rewards from an internal "defeated monsters" list. Most damage sources add to that list when they kill a target — but the vanilla basic attack did not. A one-shot basic-attack kill produced an empty list and zero rewards. Abilities, DoT ticks, and spells worked correctly, which is why the bug was intermittent.

Fixed with a safety-net sweep: before the victory handler runs, any monster that's dead but isn't in the defeated list gets credited. Closes the gap for basic attacks, weapon enchant procs (Phoenix Fire, Thunderstrike, etc.), and any future damage path without needing per-site changes.

Alignment System Audit: The 15,000 Chivalry Bug

Multiple players had accumulated Chivalry values well past the supposed 1,000 cap — one report at 15,000. The cap had been declared correctly at 1,000, but most mutation sites in the codebase bypassed the clamp.

A four-pass audit of the alignment system found:

• ~110 mutation sites across the codebase, only 8 of which were actually routing through the clamping helper. The other ~80 were raw Chivalry += X / Darkness += X statements with no cap enforcement.

• v0.57.0's paired-movement design was silently broken at most sites — a player who did 100 evil deeds in the Dark Alley accumulated 100 rounds of Darkness with zero Chivalry reduction, because every evil deed was one-sided.

• Five unreachable thresholds found by grepping for numeric alignment comparisons: the KingsAdvisor forgiveness check gated on Chivalry > 2000, the "Deal with Death" dark bargain required and cost 10,000 Darkness, two narrative dreams gated on 3,000 alignment. All unreachable with a 1,000 cap. All scaled down to reachable values.

• Two dead constants — MaxChivalry = 30000 and MaxDarkness = 30000 — sitting in config with no callers but contradicting the authoritative cap. Removed.

• Two misleading display strings on Old God boss data claiming Chivalry >= 5000 or >= 3000 as save requirements. The actual save check was artifact-based the whole time. Descriptions rewritten to match reality.

Fix, three layers of defense:

• Character setter clamps. Chivalry and Darkness can no longer be set outside [0, 1000] regardless of which code path tries. Every future mutation site is automatically bounded.

• Retroactive heal on login. Pre-v0.57.12 saves with overflow values self-heal on next login. A save with Chivalry 15,000 / Darkness 0 loads as 1,000 / 0. A save with Chivalry 1,500 / Darkness 600 loads as 1,000 / 350 — the excess 500 Chivalry retroactively reduces Darkness by half, simulating what paired movement would have done at mutation time.

• Routed 80+ bypass sites through the proper helper. v0.57.0's paired-movement design now actually fires when you do a good or evil deed — giving gold to a beggar lowers Darkness slightly, robbing a shrine lowers Chivalry slightly, etc.

Previously Unreachable Content Now Available

Because of the cap-violation bugs, four pieces of content were defined but impossible to access:

• "Deal with Death" dark bargain on the resurrection menu — required 10,000 Darkness (impossible). Now requires 500 Darkness and costs 500. A committed dark-aligned character can actually use this resurrection option.

• "The Dark Welcomes You"narrative dream — required 3,000 Darkness. Now 800.

• "The Light Remembers"narrative dream — required 3,000 Chivalry. Now 800.

• KingsAdvisor forgiveness path in the betrayal system — gated on Chivalry > 2,000. Now >= 800.

Gameplay Impact

Beyond the unreachable content unlocks, the alignment routing work also means paired-movement now fires where it should have all along:

• Church donations, blessings, and healing reduce Darkness a little when they grant Chivalry

• Dark Alley evil deeds (drug purchases, pickpocketing, fencing stolen goods, pit fights, sabotage) reduce Chivalry a little when they grant Darkness

• Quest rewards of Chivalry or Darkness now move both scales

• Temple god sacrifices — both good-god and evil-god paths — now apply paired movement

• Old God defeat and save outcomes, Anchor Road prison escapes, duel honor, knighting, orphan commissions, royal petitions, and dozens more deed-like events all now move both scales

Staying neutral (or reaching the v0.57.0 "Balanced" alignment tier) is genuinely achievable now — something the feedback that originally motivated paired movement specifically called out as too hard.

641 of 641 tests passing. No save format change. Pre-v0.57.12 saves with out-of-range alignment self-heal on next login with retroactive paired movement applied. Pre-v0.57.12 bank guards with frozen wages self-correct on next bank visit.