5.1.5

Highlights

• A little balm, a little bark, a little bleating: Juniper heals over time, turns an eligible enemy into a goat, and casts Barkskin for just 1 MP.
• The Divided Trail has more to say: puzzle over the Spinning Signpost, meet One-Eyed Jack, and step back from the final route choice before committing.
• Less shaking, more swooping: subtle attacks, spell accents, clear condition colors, and smoother Grifflet flight make the action easier to follow.
• A tidier adventurer’s toolkit: toggle sheets and maps, read clearer challenge choices, and delete individual quick or manual saves with confirmation.
• Oddwater eyes the living-room screen: Apple TV groundwork joins the project as a development milestone. Tester availability comes later; broad balance tuning belongs to 5.2.

Juniper’s Support Spell Revamp

• Briar Balm costs 1 MP and heals a living ally for d4+1 immediately and again at the start of their next two turns. Each pulse rolls separately and cures Poison and Sapped. Recasting heals immediately and refreshes the two future pulses instead of stacking another schedule.
• Balm works on different allies independently. It resolves after poison damage and before Frozen/Locked turn skips. It cannot revive a fallen hero. Unused pulses end when the recipient falls or combat ends; the caster falling does not cancel an ally’s Balm.
• Polymorph: Goat is a new starting spell, learned for free and costing 2 MP to cast. One eligible enemy becomes a goat and loses its next two turns, including multiple attacks or special actions. Positive damage breaks the spell; misses and nondamaging effects do not.
• Each caster may maintain one goat. Changing targets releases the previous target; recasting refreshes the duration. Bosses and designated minibosses are immune, with IMMUNE shown before casting and no wasted mana or action.
• Goat form keeps the enemy’s original name, health, defenses, and reward identity. Existing Freeze/Locked skips overlap with Goat instead of waiting until it ends.
• Barkskin now costs 1 MP, down from 2. Its party armor bonus and duration are unchanged. Briar Lash is unchanged mechanically.
• Distinct Briar Balm, Briar Lash, Barkskin, and Polymorph icons, a grounded goat figure, and two goat sound variations support the effects. Balm and Goat counters stay readable on one line.
• Juniper’s Wild Growth attire is available for 10 gold after recruitment. Buying and equipping remain separate actions, and attire is cosmetic. “The forest has no dress code. Juniper has taken this personally.”

New Discoveries on the Divided Trail

• The optional Spinning Signpost offers two collective approaches for any living party, plus specialist approaches for living active Xov, Markovia, and Thoradin. Collective choices no longer name an arbitrary hero.
• Success reveals useful route warnings and grants 5 base XP per living active hero, scaled by adventure difficulty. Failure has no damage or item-loss penalty. The encounter does not force a route choice; leave it unattempted to return later.
• The challenge has its own larger illustrated signpost. The ordinary blue-ribbon route sign remains a separate interaction at the end of the trail.
• Return to the Trail is now available at the final route choice, including controller Back. It preserves your position and both unchosen routes until you actually choose a path.
• One-Eyed Jack waits after the challenge: a wooden marionette with a garnet eye. Collecting the gem awards 9 base gold, with normal ordinary-gold scaling, and needs no roll or combat. It does not make an additional random chest-bonus roll.
• The tree and Jack remain after collection, with a repeat-examination message. Saving and returning cannot award the gem twice in the same expedition.
• Updated Divided Trail background and ground artwork accompany the encounters. The sign and Jack use consistent sizing and ground placement.

Combat Readability and Motion

• Figures use one dominant condition color: Hidden/Vanish silhouette first, then Frozen blue, Poison green, or muted red at 25% HP or less. Colors do not blend or alternate; existing text and counters continue to show other conditions.
• Poison and critical-health shading also follow the walking party and update after curing or healing. Walking itself does not cause poison damage.
• Attacks use a small eased step, casting has a distinct smaller movement, and positive hits use one brief recoil instead of rapid shaking. Overlapping movements stay bounded and settle back to the original position.
• Spell and ability art uses subtle pulses, rises, sweeps, and settling motions. Healing-over-time accents appear on actual healing pulses, and effect icons stay within bounded spaces above their targets.
• Gloam Grifflets swoop smoothly upward and downward instead of changing height instantly. Three flight-swoosh variations join the sound rotation. Saving, restoring, or redrawing does not replay a takeoff, landing, or spell accent.
• The Sycamore Approach stump is larger and better grounded. One-Eyed Jack’s illustration sits lower in the scene.
• These presentation changes add no combat delays, extra damage, random outcomes, or new status mechanics.

Controls, Challenges, and Save Management

• C toggles the Character Sheet; M toggles the available adventure map; J continues to toggle the Company Ledger. Inspecting the map preserves position and does not grant travel permission. Modal interactions retain priority.
• Controller Menu/Start toggles the game menu, and View/Select toggles the Character Sheet. Back closes ordinary windows while preserving cancellation of pending decisions and previews.
• Challenge choices have shorter descriptions and more readable text, including the Spinning Signpost and Rootbound Coffer/Drowsing Casket. Skills, modifiers, target numbers, and specialist requirements remain visible.
• Game Menu > Save / Load lets you delete a Quick Save or any of the three manual slots after confirmation. Deletion includes that slot’s recovery files while preserving the current adventure, resume autosave, other slots, and other campaigns. Practice continues to protect player saves.

Saved Games and Compatibility

• Existing Companies that recruited Juniper receive Polymorph: Goat automatically, retaining learned spells, equipment, and progression.
• Ongoing combat saves preserve Balm pulses, Goat turns, and pending results.
• The old blue-ribbon interaction remains compatible with existing saves. One-Eyed Jack’s collected reward stays collected within the expedition.
• Juniper’s original recruitment and the populated Heart of the Forest adventure were already in Build 8. This update expands them.

Apple TV Foundation

Build 9 establishes the first functional tvOS/Apple TV development baseline in the shared application. Apple TV is not part of this tester release.

• A dedicated Apple TV exporter, separate build counter, platform artwork, and validation tools coexist with the iPhone/iPad pipeline.
• Apple TV requires an extended game controller. Connection, disconnection, and resume screens preserve the current game page. The Siri Remote retains system navigation but is not a gameplay controller.
• Campaign selection, initial focus, native-keyboard return, menu/sheet toggles, and television-safe framing received fixes during the first physical Apple TV cycle.
• A local development build ran on an Apple TV 4K with an Xbox controller. This is a limited functional baseline, with full hardware acceptance and TestFlight readiness still ahead.
• Current Apple TV saves are local cache files, may be purged by tvOS, and do not sync with other devices. Storage durability, formal controller/suspend acceptance, Top Shelf export warnings, and signing-trust evidence remain future platform work.
• Windows and iPhone/iPad remain the priority targets; the Apple TV foundation stays integrated for future development.

Looking Ahead to 5.2

Build 9 closes the 5.1.5 development cycle. Shared support for collective challenges, starter-spell updates, creature immunity, condition colors, and effect animation gives future heroes, creatures, spells, and adventures more to build on.

The game project’s Player’s Handbook, Game Master’s Guide, and relevant authoring guides have been synchronized. Reproducible balance and elemental-coverage studies are also included in the project.

Proposed difficulty multipliers, progression changes, and resistance redistributions are not installed in Build 9. Broader tuning is deferred to 5.2. The Build 9 Balance Update is an analysis and proposal checkpoint. This build includes no third adventure or new Divided Trail combat.