Early Access v0.48.20

Wardens of Wen - Early Access v0.48.20

Greetings, Wardens!

Update v0.48.20 is here, bringing a massive overhaul to the Mercenary system, a wave of new game-changing artifacts, a rebuilt controller-first options menu, and a huge list of quality-of-life improvements, combat tweaks, and polish.

This update heavily improves the companion experience and late-game readability with much cleaner menus, smarter UI scaling, batched damage numbers, and deep Steam Input support. We've also focused heavily on our summoners, giving Sage and George dedicated HUD expansions alongside major mechanical buffs to their units and building flows.

Hero Reworks: Sage & George

Sage Summon Overhaul - Sage's summons are significantly tougher and much smarter. Summons received massive buffs across the board to their health, shields, armor, dodge, and out-of-combat regeneration. Enemies will now actively peel to attack a nearby summon, allowing Beetles and Snakes to effectively off-tank for you. Summons also utilize tighter merc-style regrouping and will spread cleanly around Sage during a Rally.

George RTS Improvements - George's building sequence now leaves the live match running rather than pausing single-player combat. Clicking a build option immediately anchors a ghost structure for seamless RTS-style placement. Additionally, trained militia have received massive pathing improvements for tighter wall-following and collision-awareness.

George Cleric Support Feedback - George's Cleric mini-units now provide explicit green healing numbers and foregrounded sparkle cues, making it much easier to track unit sustain during dense militia battles without cluttering the screen with full-size damage numbers.

HUD, UI & Accessibility

Options Menu Redesign - The Options screen has been rebuilt from the ground up for proper controller-first navigation. It now features fixed section rails, grouped setting cards, and persistent back actions. Gameplay remapping and Menu UI controls are now clearly separated.

Summon & Supply Tracking - Sage and George both received dedicated Supply HUD panels beside the Lives tracker for much better unit management. The minimap wallet strip has also been decluttered to only show Copper and Gold.

Steam Input Overhaul - Deepened Steam Input support to drive the authoritative controller snapshot. The game now handles PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch glyphs seamlessly and accurately patches native events without dropping inputs.

Ultrawide & HUD Scaling - The combat ability tray and inventory overlay now scale dynamically with UI density, so larger viewports and ultrawide monitors no longer compress content or clip slots.

NPC Portraits & Dialogue - Added portrait-backed dialogue sequences. Major bosses like Verdaxis and Baron Von Dreadmoor now announce their arrivals with pauseable dialogue cards, and Pub mercenaries feature pre-hire conversational hubs.

Items & Loot

10 New Artifacts - Added a large batch of new ultra-rare Artifacts: Orbb, Glizzy, One True Ring, Crown of the Mad King, HK Aiming Module, A Free Man's Crowbar, Scrying Orb, Witch Hat, Cigarette, Duct Tape, and The Chandler. These grant wild new abilities like disguise transformations, spare lives, enemy cleaving, poison smoke buffs, and teleport markers.

Artifact Rework & Economy - Artifacts have been pushed into a dedicated ultra-rare loot path to preserve their power and uniqueness. They now sell for 2,000c to 5,000c, and their recipes can no longer be generated or learned.

Artifact Hotbar Expansion - Equipment-granted abilities (like the Scrying Orb's teleport or Cigarette's Puff) now stack correctly, dynamically expanding the ability hotbar into slots 5 through 9 for deep builds.

Consumable Asset Polish - All in-game food has been completely rebased onto a new high-quality atlas. Nearly 50 unique foods (like Frog Legs, Shrimp Rolls, Cherry Pies, and Gizzards) now render reliably across the live game, inventory, and trades, officially replacing all legacy placeholder icons.

Gameplay, Balance & Mechanics

Mercenary Companion Overhaul - Mercenaries are now invulnerable support companions. They ignore enemy aggro, level up independently alongside you via shared XP, and feature mutually exclusive skill trees instead of generic inventory sharing.

Mercenary Contracts - Mercs now charge an upkeep cost per wave instead of a heavy upfront lump sum. Dismissed or unpaid mercs can be re-hired in the same run to instantly restore their saved level and skill points.

Damage Number Batching - Late-game performance and readability are now much smoother. Simultaneous local hits from AoE attacks and cleaves now clump into larger combined floating values when passing a set threshold, stopping damage spam from fully covering bosses.

Smarter Enemy AI - Tightened pursuit AI across all roles. Tanks, DPS, and healers now confidently collapse upon the Warden's position rather than idling or prioritizing invulnerable turrets and escorts.

Bug Fixes & General Polish

Summon & Structure Reliability - Fixed instances where George's newly placed buildings could get randomly wiped out by stale multiplayer network projectiles. We also fixed Sage wasting energy or cooldowns by misfiring spells when already at the summon supply cap.

Controller Remapping Fixes - Resolved a large number of edge cases that caused menus to get locked, ignored, or automatically closed while rebinding D-pads or controller face buttons.

Fullscreen Mouse Alignment - Fixed instances where changing resolutions or swapping to exclusive fullscreen left the Options menu partially unclickable due to misaligned mouse hitboxes.

Cigarette Polish - Cigarette's "Puff" self-poison now properly drains 10% of your maximum health over the buff duration and reliably bypasses shields.

Mercenary Pathing & Sound - Added new weapon and spell sound effects for allied mercenaries. Companions now maintain tight dynamic formations, slide around corners cleanly, and perform unstuck teleports instantly.

Dragon Stalls - Fixed Dragon boss encounters where the boss would get stuck pathing back into the spawning gate portal due to player collision.

Thanks for playing and helping shape Wardens of Wen during Early Access. More updates are on the way!