5.2

Highlights

• The battlefield has found its footing: centered damage and healing, paired spell art, a bright blue-white turn ring, and status text that no longer wanders off.
• A fourth book burns on the shelf: The Burning City opens ten illustrated locations, seven battles, puzzles, hazards, discoveries, and Vellakar’s troubles.
• Meet Kobol: a rune golem with four Earth spells, a useful gravity problem, and little patience for lengthy replies.
• Read the wreckage: the Eye now opens framed graph-paper combat reports for each adventure’s latest victory, defeat, or retreat.
• More sparks in the soundtrack: five City tracks, expanded magic and monster effects, and accumulated fixes across saves, touch windows, rewards, and exploration.

The Build 11 Update

Build 11 brings The Burning City, a complete fourth adventure, and a combat UI overhaul that makes every turn easier to follow. It also adds a new companion and Earth spells, combat reports, a larger sound-effects collection, five new music tracks, and the fixes from recent playtests.

Adventure 4: The Burning City

• Explore ten illustrated locations across Vellakar, from the Scorched Road and City Gates through markets, barricades, a burning winery, cellars, watercourse, garden and city halls.
• Seven encounters introduce seven new creature types, alongside two interactive puzzles, hazards, discoveries, chests, conversations, clues and a camp.
• The cellar ladder offers a confirmed shortcut to the Garden without permanently closing the longer Watercourse route; wine beyond the ladder can still be collected before climbing.
• New attacks include fire, constriction, temporary growth and varied choices. A constricted hero can attempt Escape, or be freed by defeating the captor.
• The Flaming Horseshoe gives the active party Fire resistance while its active wearer has it—even if fallen. It does not protect from reserve, consume an armor-ward slot, or stack a second Fire reduction.
• Completion rewards are recorded separately and granted once. Final art refinements improve firelit scenery and character presentation.

Kobol and Earth Magic

• Kobol joins the reserves through his conversation, at level 6 or the lowest active hero’s higher level, without replacing anyone in the active four.
• He brings 20 base HP, 14 AC, Earth weapon attunement, an Earth armor ward, and four spells: Hurl Stone, Fault Line, Gravity Well, and Rune Detonation.
• Kobol has base, Gilded, and Spike attire. Purchasing an outfit still leaves equipping it as a separate choice.
• Existing development-save progress is preserved; starter ownership is repaired without replacing equipment, exceeding ward capacity, or healing injured heroes.

Combat UI Overhaul

• Damage and healing now share a steady middle band, centered over the affected figure. Spell and ability art sits above the result as one brief visual pair.
• A thicker blue-white oval at the acting character’s feet replaces the yellow overhead marker. Selected-target panels remain independently dark and readable.
• Thorn Skin and Briar Balm labels sit beneath the heroes; transient captions stay complete on one line, including CAMO, THAWED, and resistance messages.
• Spell buttons give names a full first line and MP/IMMUNE information a padded second line. Fire, Frost, protection, retaliation, special attacks and statuses receive more paired art and appropriate sounds.
• City creatures and heroes have improved grounding and proportions, including Goblins, Bugbears, Water Weirds and Flaming Skulls.

Combat Reports and Tuning

• The Eye button opens the latest completed fight or retreat for that adventure, with enemy names/counts, location, difficulty, outcome, rounds, and framed graph-paper statistics.
• Reports preserve participating heroes and enemies through travel, party changes and save/load. Damage, healing and critical-hit counts exclude overkill and overhealing while crediting ongoing-effect sources.
• Thorn Skin replaces Barkskin while preserving learned ownership: it costs 1 MP, reflects 2 Earth damage from damaging melee hits, and refreshes rather than stacks.
• The final City encounter has been retuned from the first Build 11 playtest. City profiles offer more Wind, Holy and Earth counters; saved battles retain their captured tuning.

Puzzles, Rewards, and the Library

• Fresh rosebed layouts use both colors without immediately repeating their last completed arrangement; existing partial puzzles remain valid. The bottle-stack puzzle supports touch and controller choices.
• Wine discoveries distinguish cheap bottles from rare vintages; settled dice and receipts remain visible, rare finds chime, and rewards celebrate only once.
• Riskier challenge choices now advertise higher gold and XP rewards. Challenge receipts show actual per-hero consequences, and bonus chest panels keep stable bounds through long names and gold conversions.
• Adventure books remain ordered by number, open to the current book, and retain their soft-blue current glow and IN PROGRESS bookmark. Story order is now Forsaken Woods → Heart of the Forest → Lost Dungeons → Burning City.
• Existing earned access and active expeditions remain preserved. Maps, introductions, routes, landmarks, dialogue portraits and discoveries receive clearer presentation and continued save compatibility.

Music, Touch, and Save Continuity

• The Burning City adds three exploration tracks and two combat tracks, plus 39 selected sound clips across 20 effects. Magical cues avoid stacking generic impacts, variants rotate, and celebrations do not replay from old receipts.
• Combat dice are quiet by default; chest and challenge dice retain their sounds. Existing Master and SFX controls still apply.
• On iPhone and iPad, tapping outside cancellable floating windows dismisses only the top level. It never confirms purchases, loads/deletes saves, or activates the scene behind it.
• Existing Companies, equipment, spells, tiers, completions, challenge receipts, partial puzzles, combat conditions and reports carry forward. No campaign reset is required.