5.4.1

Highlights

• All ten adventure books: matching artwork windows, round number badges, five illustrated Coming soon previews and a new Arena panel.
• Exploration and dice preparation: less repeated work, bounded scenery caching and loading preparation ahead of play.
• Combat clarity: change targets during enemy turns, read fuller history and larger MISS feedback, and see Escape’s DC.
• Controller convenience: forward actions receive focus, triggers switch Town members without losing action focus, and R3 toggles reading artwork.
• Save confirmation: successful explicit saves show a green Game Saved notification.

Availability

These are the notes for the selected 5.4.1 (19) source; they do not announce an Apple app release. The owner reports local QA complete. Native iOS qualification and internal TestFlight delivery are next, followed by separate Apple TV device deployment. Build 18 remains the latest confirmed iOS delivery. First tvOS TestFlight availability is not announced.

Ten books on the shelf

All ten adventures now appear in fixed numbered order. Every cover shares the same large artwork window across display ratios, with consistent parchment Basic/Soon labels and smooth circular adventure-number badges at the bottom right. Covers 6–10 use teal, sky blue, burnt orange, gold yellow and black/silver respectively. All covers show their adventure artwork in this testing build; no padlock covers are active.

Boglands, Trouble in the Meadows, The Titan Forge, Harvest of the Moon Stare and The Floating Citadel open illustrated Coming soon previews. They have no launch controls, adventure details, routes, encounters or rewards. Their framework is prepared without adding gameplay. A configurable locked/unlocked cover-art switch is available for future work; it does not enforce gameplay prerequisites. Interior previews retain the original artwork. Playable books focus Start, Resume or Replay when opened; placeholder books retain Back.

The Arena entry moves to the top right of Choose Your Adventure, using the shared dark gray/silver frame, white text, red entry button and overlapping crossed swords. The decorative horizontal rule is removed. Long titles fit beneath the artwork without changing its window size.

Exploration and dice preparation

Earlier iOS performance work is integrated. Scenery caching retains one environment; destination resources and actual native d20/d6 rendering are prepared during a shared loading/input transition. Repeated exploration initialization, queries and compact-text fitting are reduced, with incremental garbage collection enabled. Resource operations survive interruptions and owned preparation work is disposed on cancellation. Walking does not trigger forced collection or scenery unloading.

A brief loading cover can appear during travel, town changes or map previews. Committed dice presentations finish before transition cleanup. Stale combat callbacks and hidden legacy portrait construction are guarded. These are implementation improvements, preserving movement rules, art quality, dice outcomes, rewards and save behavior. Physical Apple performance still needs qualification; an isolated walking hitch and end-of-roll reconstruction costs remain under investigation.

Clearer combat information

Friendly and enemy targets can be changed during enemy turns and pending dice presentation, independently of the acting character. Action eligibility remains restricted to the appropriate turn. Mouse, touch and controller selection preserve committed combat.

Combat history measures available width instead of applying a fixed 90-character ceiling. On wider desktop displays, initiative/history ends at the right edge of the final party plaque. Phone and tablet retain their established span. MISS feedback is larger and closer in scale to damage numbers. Exploration location names use regular weight beneath the bold adventure/difficulty heading.

When engulfed, Escape shows a large centered bold DC 12. The displayed value comes from the existing rule; the escape threshold and resolution have not changed. The experimental missing-health red shading remains disabled by default after visual feedback. Revised proofs are retained for review; neither the shading nor an alternative health line is enabled in this release.

Controller flow from one action to the next

D-pad and stick navigation now crosses party portraits and the toolbar in both directions. Combat-history recall receives a visible focus cue. Exploration Interact/Travel receives a clear glow at an eligible location end. Reward and journal-entry pages focus Continue along the Trail or Travel, retaining that request until chest presentation completes. Completion and defeat focus their forward return/Temple action without moving to the toolbar.

Selecting a campaign by click or A moves focus to Continue Campaign without loading it. Browsing alone stays in the campaign list; Up from Continue returns to the selected row. Complete campaign names wrap, phone rows are easier to read, and the More menu retains full outside-dismissal coverage after safe-area changes.

In Town and services with a visible selectable Company, LT/RT cycle active party members consistently with combat. Focus stays on the same available action, including Level Up across members and changing XP costs. LB/RB remain reserved for menu paging. Y inspects the selected member and B returns; modal decisions block underlying selection. Shop attire selection follows the chosen active member, while reserve cards remain available through ordinary navigation.

Dawn Stones options have a bright blue halo and clear edge showing controller focus before an answer is chosen. Navigation alone does not submit an answer or apply a penalty. On illustrated reading pages, R3 opens the artwork while Continue retains its action focus; R3 closes the zoom. A can close an open zoom and continue once.

Travel from exploration focuses the current HERE location on the map. D-pad/stick can select another available destination; A moves focus to Travel and a second A enters it once. Previewing the map does not grant travel permission or change the saved exploration position.

Save feedback and compatibility

Successful quick saves, manual slot saves and Save & Leave show a short green Game Saved notification. Failed writes do not announce success and retain the previous checkpoint. Routine interruption-recovery autosaves stay quiet.

Existing campaigns, adventure progress, entitlements, rewards and save identity are preserved. The four-book difficulty gate is unchanged. Black Tundra remains development content; adventures 6–10 are artwork-only placeholders. Moonbones remains unlimited for testing. No save wipe, balance change, cloud saves or newly completed adventure is introduced. Apple TV still requires an extended controller, uses local cache saves that tvOS may purge, and does not sync saves with iPhone/iPad.

What to test

Page through all ten books and previews; check consistent art windows, complete titles, number circles and Arena placement. Walk several locations for at least ten minutes, including reverse walking, map previews/travel, town return/resume and first/repeated d20/d6 rolls. Report loading delays separately from walking or result-reveal stutter.

Exercise enemy-turn target changes, history width, MISS and engulf Escape. Try every controller forward-action flow, Town triggers with action focus retained, bumper paging, Dawn Stones focus, R3/A reading behavior, current-location map entry and successful/failed saves. On Apple devices check landscape safe areas, audio, background/resume and interrupted loading/rolls. On Apple TV test no-controller launch, disconnect/reconnect, 1080p/4K readability and local-save survival through an in-place upgrade.

Include device/OS/controller, app build, location, party, difficulty, dice/frame-rate settings, time since launch and reproduction steps. Screenshots or a short recording help.